


The Mermaid and the Prince

by Amzzz358



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work, The Little Mermaid - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 22:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 33,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20071342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amzzz358/pseuds/Amzzz358
Summary: A lonely prince dreams of the world outside his castle by the sea, and finds his life changed by a friend he meets on the beach one day.A story based on a series of illustrations I've been working on in the last year or two.





	1. Chapter 1

It was mid-winter, and the previous night’s storm hadn’t done much to lift the ever present fog that crawled into the coastline, inch by inch with every rushing wave. The sea was dark, frothing turquoise foam impatiently over the dull sand. Not daring to come too close to its hungry rhythm as he made his way along the bay, the prince made sure to keep a distance between himself and the water’s edge.  
The water-filled bucket he carried weighed him down and the sand beneath him was still wet enough from the night before to slow his pace, but he knew that the heavy mist swirling around him would be thick enough today to keep him hidden from the castle. The view of the dim beach around him couldn’t really be considered picturesque at this time of year, but it was quiet enough to almost be serene. The prince was more than willing to brave the damp air for a few hours of privacy from the rush of the castle.  
Against the drabness of the white sand, jellyfish and shells that had been stranded by the storm stood out like gems. Every now and then he would stop, dropping down to the sand to pick them up into his bucket. He was careful as he worked, using a piece of driftwood to scoop each creature into the bucket without touching it, pausing a moment to watch each one uncurl and spread in the water as though with relief.  
His care soon lead to focus, and the dampened view around him meant that he quickly lost track of his surroundings and it wasn’t until a bright flash of colour bloomed against the clouding mist, demanding his attention, that he realised how far out into the bay he’d travelled.  
The colours here had drained out so starkly that it would have been near impossible to miss the mermaid.  
It lay across the sand, and the prince could have believed it was lost in a peaceful sleep if it weren’t for the awkward way it lay face down in the sand. Hidden from view, sea water trickled down onto the mermaid’s face from a mass of greenish hair so tangled and knotted that the prince would have been forgiven for mistaking it for a pile of seaweed if not for the lightness of the colour. He had never seen hair like it, but the curls of pale turquoise didn’t distract him for long.  
From the white skin of the mermaid’s lower back, jewelled scales of teal dripped down over the tail, a sudden vibrant burst of colour that mesmerised the prince after being cocooned by so much swirling white. It was a colour that would have made the sea itself jealous, especially on a day as dull as today.  
Hands beginning to tremble, the prince set down his bucket and crouched down by the creature, both afraid of waking it and of finding it unable to wake. It took him a second to actually reach out once he was close enough, afraid that he might hurt the creature in some way, or that it would simply disappear if he dared to touch it.  
It was ice cold. He hesitated a second longer, reluctant to make another move. Pushing gently against the mermaid’s shoulder, he rolled it around to lay on its back. The turquoise curls followed the motion, falling out of the way and allowing the prince to see its face. The boy looked young—and he was a boy, the prince could see that now—possibly not far from the prince’s own age. They didn’t even look dissimilar. The prince had never seen a mermaid before, having been told since he was a child that they were fairytale creatures only spoken of by sailors, but it startled him now to see how human the boy’s face seemed to be.  
He was pale; so close to ivory that the sand beneath him looked grey. Tucked under his curls, visible now that his hair had fallen away, three slashes were cut across either side of the mermaid’s throat—gills. The sight of them startled the prince into action, laying a quick but gentle hand against the mermaid’s chest, still so cold it hurt to touch. Through the paper-thin skin the prince could feel a slight fluttering. A heartbeat.  
As he watched closely, the creature’s chest seemed to rise, ever so slightly, and fall again. He thought of the stories he’d read and heard as a child, stories of mermaids sitting on rocks out of water and calling out into the air to sailors and prayed that they were based on some truth. Despite having been rolled over and poked at, the mermaid still hadn’t woken.  
The prince stood again, more for the sake of moving than knowing what to do. He looked out to the ocean as though it might have the answer, unconvinced that any creature—awake or not—would appreciate being pushed out into water churning and crashing as it did today.  
He knew his time was limited, his absence would be noticed at the castle eventually and somebody would be sent out to search for him. Would the creature have woken by that time? As close as they seemed in age, the prince was sure the mermaid would weigh about the same as he did. More than he could carry alone.  
Gazing back to the castle, he bit his lip.

“I’m not quite happy to be conspiring with you on this one, sir.”  
The man towering behind the prince, dragging a pallet across the sand, worked at the castle and had begrudgingly agreed to follow the distressed prince out onto the bay once he’d been tracked down in the servants’ quarters. He’d been mostly unimpressed by the prince’s claim that it was urgent they rush out onto the drizzling beach, particularly as the boy refused to say why. He had eventually been swayed by the prince’s promise that he would stop trying to skip lessons for the next month or so, maybe even two, if the man followed him now. The man was often expected to act as the boy’s nanny, following and chasing him around, and so had obliged. He had assumed that the prince had found something, a large rock or piece of driftwood, that he wanted in his room but was too weak to carry. It would take fifteen minutes to follow him down to the beach and back—a worthy task for the favour he would then be owed.  
The prince almost fell to the floor when they finally made it back to the mermaid, so great was his relief that it hadn’t been washed away, found by someone else, or simply just ceased to exist in his absence. In his rush to return to the mermaid before it could disappear again, he had overlooked telling the man what they would find, not considering what his reaction would be.  
The man swore. Shaking his head and clutching at his neck where he wore a religious symbol, he turned away, claiming the prince shouldn’t have strayed out so far away from the castle, that returning now and pretending they hadn’t seen anything unusual was the only chance they had that this bad omen might pass them by. It had taken what felt like twenty minutes to convince the man to help him, and even then he refused to make contact with the mermaid, standing and waiting for the prince to figure out how to pull the creature onto the pallet now being dragged towards the castle without causing more hurt, offering no help but the odd curse or comment muttered under his breath.  
“Well,” was all the prince could think to reply; his mind was more occupied with mapping out the secret ways he’d learnt in and out of the castle, trying to work out what would be the best path for their current situation.  
The prince was quite familiar with the man. He was often appointed to watch over the prince, partially for his ability to simply pick the boy up if he was caught attempting to sneak out. Aside from this particularly patronising trait, the prince quite enjoyed the man’s company. He was often easy to distract, filled to the brim with stories and songs from his previous life as a sailor, and the boy found his silent demeanour easy to trust.  
“Your parents aren’t going to be happy to know what you’re bringing into their castle.”  
The servant had a good point, though the prince wasn’t planning on his parents finding out about this particular outing, and said as much. The man scoffed at that.  
“A foolproof plan then, sir. Very well thought through.”  
The prince did not reply. They had reached the edge of the beach. Pale sand met dark rock, a vast wall climbing jaggedly up into the air before them. Footpaths had been worn across the cliff face over the years, strewn about here and there and carving darker lines into the rock like veins pulling them up towards the castle. It was a simple enough path from the beach, one they were both familiar with, but the pallet would be useless to both of them against the rock’s steep edge.  
A dark look passed over the man’s face as he looked from the pathway they would take to the pallet, the sleeping mermaid still strewn across it. He was small, his weight probably nothing to the man’s strength, but still the man paused. Silent for a moment, the prince was on the edge of offering to try carrying one end of the pallet up the steep slope when the man reached down to lift the mermaid.  
The prince could see the man’s superstitions in the cautious way he lifted the mermaid, knowing why he was so reluctant to aid with this venture. Years of working on the sea had left the man believing that seeing a mermaid or hearing its song was a bad omen, one that left ships destroyed and men drowned. The prince could only imagine what the man thought about bringing one into his place of work, and it was nearly enough to make the prince feel guilty—but when he saw how frail and helpless the mermaid looked when carried in the towering man’s heavy arms his resolve was settled. Bad omen or not, the creature needed help.  
The climb was slow progress. The prince set off in front of the servant, but slowed his pace and stopped to offer help whenever the winding path became too steep, thin, or unstable. The moisture in the air cleared as they climbed, but the view it revealed wasn’t much to marvel at during this time of year. The fog gave way to somehow even gloomier earth, barren of life except for scruffy overgrowth and dead-looking bracken. The cliffs themselves, rising up from the pacing sea to meet the castle, were known for their dark stone- a dark black tongue sticking out from the bay’s pale white sands into the churning waters. It was a dreary sight in the winter months, with the swirling fog all around and the darkened sea throwing itself continuously at the rocks as though a sea witch lay below the surface, crying out with every desperate, crashing reach up for the delicate castle.  
It stood, pale and eggshell-green in the light, like a piece of coral growing alone on the edge of a reef. In the warmer months, the contrast of the jade castle set against the black rock was famed for its striking beauty, with visitors often praising the intricate, shell-like design and unusual colour choice. But now, surrounded by heavy clouds and the even heavier pressing of the sea, the prince thought his home looked fragile and ethereal. Just waiting for a wave strong enough to buffet the whole thing underwater, lost to the flow of the tide like an abandoned shell being turned over and over in the water’s swell.  
“How long are you expecting you can maintain this little secret?” asked the servant, calling ahead to the prince once their pathway had levelled out a little, snapping him out of his reverie. He sounded out of breath.  
“As long as it needs to heal and return to the water.”  
“Ah, so you have considered the likely reality that once this… secret enters the castle, it will also have to, at some point, _leave_ the castle?” There was a clear edge to the man’s voice.__  
“Of course.” The prince knew from experience that the short answer would annoy the man.  
“And how will that be, sir? I’m sure you have thought much on this plan? How will you be guaranteeing the reliability of the event?”  
“Well,” the prince didn’t even turn to face the man, knowing the response he was about to get. “You will have to accompany me once again, as you have done today.” He heard the sound of the man’s boots scuffing to a standstill. Carrying on ahead, he gained a distance between himself and the servant while the man doubtlessly worked out his annoyance at the prince’s words by kicking the odd pebble over the cliff’s edge, sending it tumbling back down to the sea.  
They weren’t far from the castle now. He could see it, rising up from the swirling grey, reaching up to the dreary sky and away from the clutches of the tide. Even in the dull depths of winter, people still considered the unusual colour of the castle set against the pale landscape swarming around it striking, but after seeing the radiant gleam of the mermaid’s tail that morning, the shell-studded aquamarine walls looked garish to the prince.  
From the looks of things, his disappearance still hadn’t been noted at the castle—usually there would be a guard or sometimes even an unimpressed-looking parent waiting outside for him if he was in trouble. It didn’t mean that sneaking back in would be in an easy task, however.  
They had reached the castle wall. A guard stood watch atop the castle, but he couldn’t see their approach from the path the prince had chosen. Once the guard moved they would sneak around to a side door, and then—providing the kitchens were empty in the middle of the afternoon as they usually were—through a winding tunnel of servants’ stairs and corridors up to the prince's floor.  
Free of the rocky paths and on more level ground, it didn’t take the servant long to catch up with the prince. He was out of breath and clearly unimpressed with the whole ordeal. “And what makes you think that I will in fact agree to this ludicrous proposition you have put before me?” he shot back at the prince.  
“Because,” keeping his voice steady and calm as he replied. The prince didn’t take his eyes from the castle wall, knowing that they would need to move the second the guard disappeared from view. “It’s the only way for you to guarantee that I will in fact have returned the secret back to the sea.”  
The guard moved. Off to complete his rounds, the prince predicted, not planning on sticking around long enough to find out. Whether it was because of their sudden dash to the door or not, the servant didn’t have a reply for the prince.


	2. Chapter 2

The mermaid didn’t wake until later that night, the servant having dragged in and filled a bathtub for the creature to lay in. It sat in the prince’s room under the rows of shelving that lined the walls, covered in well-worn books and odd trinkets collected from the sea on days like today. It had been a miracle that no suspicions had been aroused by the sound of the tub being moved into the prince’s room, let alone the succession of journeys made back and forth to fill up the tub to a comfortable level for his new friend. But at last it was done, and even the prince had to admit that nothing stood out so strangely against the ornate wallpaper and antique shelving of his room as the now half-filled bathtub sat before him—let alone the mermaid still sleeping in it.  
It hadn’t been easy getting the creature in. They’d mostly been able to sneak their way up along the back steps from the kitchen, but even then there had been the odd butler or maid chasing about to hide from. There had been a mad dash along the upper corridor, a mezzanine that hung over the great hall where his parents had sat in court session with several tens of visitors. They had been lucky; no one had looked up, taking their shadowy figures to be servants rushing along with a nondescript pile of food or laundry.  
The pair had made it to the prince’s corridor, almost to safety, before someone halted them in their tracks. The prince’s tutor, demanding to know where the prince had been all afternoon, why he had disappeared half way through their lesson, and _did he think it was acceptable to waste a scholar’s time like this?_  
The prince had spun some tale as he usually did, something about an accident in the servants quarters he’d happened to witness. The man clearly didn’t believe a word he’d said, but the prince made up for it by signing his life away, promising to be at the library all the earlier the next day, and every day after that, while his servant kept hidden in an alcove. Finally, placated, the tutor left and there was a free pathway to the prince’s bedroom.  
The prince had given his servant one last job—to spread the word that he would be spending the evening studying and was not to be disturbed. The man made a comment at that, declaring that the biggest challenge of this whole ordeal would be having the rest of the castle believe such a claim. He had, however, apparently been successful, as aside from the man himself returning later in the evening to deliver a plate of food, the prince had been undisturbed for the evening.  
The prince had pulled an armchair across from his work table to sit close to the creature as he slept, the handful of jellyfish he’d collected earlier floating around contentedly in a tank behind the tub, his plans to study them forgotten now as he waited for his new companion to wake.  
It had been boring work. After the excitement of his discovery and the thrill of sneaking the mermaid back into the castle, he was disappointed to find himself sitting and watching the boy continue in his unconscious state for nearly an hour. Though his concern lingered for the boy, his patience dwindled. He picked at his food in the silence of the room, trying not to eat it all in his boredom in case the creature was hungry when he woke. Despite having refused to even turn his head towards the corner of the room where the mermaid slept when he had returned that evening, the servant had brought up enough food for at least two people to eat.  
The room was candlelit now and the reflections of the flames dancing about in the mermaid’s scales, hypnotic and calming, made the prince begin to grow drowsy. Not wanting to drop asleep and miss the mermaid waking, eventually the prince allowed himself to pull a book off of the shelf behind, reasoning that he could check on the boy each time he finished a chapter.  
He didn’t know how long the mermaid had been awake for when he next looked up from the page and, startled by the open eyes watching him, dropped his book. The sound of it hitting the floor with a clatter shocked the mermaid into motion, trying to push himself away with a splash of water, but without far to reach in the oval bathtub he had to make do with shrinking down under the water.  
The prince followed the motion, mourning his now waterlogged book for a brief second as he pushed it aside to drop to the floor and crouch by the tub. His hands itched to reach out in some kind of welcome to the boy but he held himself back, not wanting to startle the already frightened creature.  
His eyes were wide, watching, as they peeked up from the surface. In them the prince could see the same soft teal as its tail and hair—but darker still, like the swirling depths of the sea had been that morning as the prince walked the beach, the lingering presence of the storm still churning up the rushing waters. The prince found himself reaching out, feeling the same pull he felt whenever he looked out to the ocean. The mermaid reacted in time, ducking a little further under the water still and the prince pulled back the hand he had been reaching out.  
“I—” he stumbled over his words, his voice hoarse after the quiet night and trembling at the thought of what to say. “It’s okay,” he continued, voice becoming firmer as he tried to sound reassuring. “You’re safe here. I won’t hurt you.”  
The creature did not react.  
Unsure of how he should take the response, or lack thereof, the prince tried again. “You were hurt, on—on the beach. I took you here so you could rest. Then you can go back to the ocean. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”  
Still, the mermaid did not move. The only indication that he was paying attention in any way came from the glances he was flicking to the prince’s mouth, as though he couldn’t make sense of why this strange human would be flapping his mouth open and shut like a fish gasping for air on dry land. The prince wondered if maybe the boy couldn’t hear him with his head under the water, and stuck for any other ideas, sat as still as he could in hopes that it would convince the boy that he was safe enough to move from his shelter in the tub.  
Eventually, after the moments of staring continued on, the prince slowly reached out his hand in a gesture he hoped the mermaid would recognise. The creature switched his gaze to the outstretched hand, before taking a quick look back at the prince’s eyes as though to make sure he was trustworthy. Slowly, gradually, the boy uncurled himself from his hiding position, and let himself lean an inch closer to the prince.  
The curls of hair pulled back, dragged down by the weight of the water soaked into them, revealing something the prince hadn’t noticed in his rush to get the mermaid to safety— he didn’t have any ears.  
“Oh!” he called out in his surprise, moving his hand with a start. The mermaid jumped back again, eyes widening in fear and dropping down under the water as low as he could once more. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—” the prince started, but then cut himself short. The water was pushing back the mermaid’s hair completely now, revealing the truth clearly. In the space where ears should have been skin continued, almost completely smooth except for a small hollow above the gills.  
“You can’t hear me, can you?” The still fearful look in the mermaid’s eyes and his confused expression was the only answer the prince received.  
Looking around at his now saturated books and trinkets strewn about, the prince began to consider for the first time that this may not have been a very good idea.  
He sighed, and rubbed at his forehead as the thought of having kidnapped an unwilling victim with no way of explaining himself sunk in—and he couldn’t help but laugh at the situation. In the corner of his eye he could see the mermaid’s head tilt slightly, as though the expression on the prince’s face seemed strange to the creature.  
He could just imagine his mother walking in now. Taking in the mess, the puddles of water, and what was undeniably a fairytale creature come to life, trapped and panicking in her son’s bedroom. The misplaced bathtub would probably be the most offensive thing to her. And then would come the hysterics. He’d been caught out many times for his less-than-distinguished ideas and tricks, but he had to wonder what punishment he would be in for this time. Surely more than just a grounding or extra study time—this went a little further than his usual crimes of sneaking out of the castle and avoiding his duties. Maybe they’d even throw him in the dungeon this time? They’d been threatening that one since he’d accidentally let a flock of seagulls loose in the library a few years ago.  
The smile fading from his lips, he glanced back at the mermaid from under his eyelashes, still unsure of what to do next.  
The boy looked scared.  
The wide-eyed look on his face made the prince find his resolve. He had brought the mermaid into the castle without explanation, he had decided to help the boy heal, and it was his responsibility now to try and find some way to communicate with him—at least enough to help him feel a little more at home during his stay.  
He daren’t offer his hand again, expecting the creature to be wary of that gesture after having been flapped at a moment before. He looked up at his shelves, wondering if a shell or stone collected from the ocean would be enough of a gesture of kindness for the boy to understand and leaned over to reach for an item, all but sticking his elbow into the abandoned plate of food he’d left unfinished earlier as he reached.  
His face lit up at the sight of it. The food was a little damp, like most things in his room now were, but he couldn’t imagine a mermaid of all creatures would be _that_ upset by his food having a little water on it, and he offered up the plate, hopeful.  
“Here,” he said, habitually speaking to explain again, but he caught himself quickly. He tried, instead, to show his meaning through gesture. The mermaid followed the prince’s wafting motions and looked over the food with nothing short of suspicion in his eyes. The prince had to wonder if the mermaid had ever seen anything like a plate before and how ridiculous the concept might seem to a creature that probably hunted for all of its food.  
Balancing the plate with one hand, the prince picked up a leaf of lettuce and chewed on it. The mermaid watched him intensely, waiting for the prince to swallow the mouthful and hold out the plate again before he would allow himself to draw a little closer and inspect the food. After a moment the mermaid lifted a dripping hand from the water and pointed at the plate, and then to himself. The prince nodded eagerly but the mermaid gazed back at him with confusion still, until the prince moved the food closer to him. The prince forced himself to stay as still as he could while the mermaid went over each item of food, even stopping to sniff at a few things, before picking up a piece of fish and pushing himself back to the safety of the other side of the bathtub.  
He didn’t eat it right away, all but glaring at the prince who still sat unmoving, holding up the plate until he realised that he was staring and tried to make himself busy with finding a place to leave the food within reach of the bathtub. In the corner of his eye the prince could see the mermaid inspecting the fish further, finally taking a small, cautious bite. By the time the prince had set the plate down again the mermaid had finished, and was quicker to move again towards the food now. Wondering when the last time the boy could have eaten would have been, the prince waved towards it to show the mermaid that he could eat freely.  
The mermaid didn’t wait for privacy this time and helped himself to another piece of fish. He had allowed himself to move closer to the prince now and in between each bite the prince realised that the mermaid’s teeth were a little sharper and more pointed than his own. His fingers itched to pull out a book to record everything he was learning about the boy, but he resisted the urge to observe the mermaid as a specimen, telling himself to just focus on making his new friend feel at home first.  
Slowly the mermaid began to make his way through more of the food on the plate, mostly focusing on fish and the occasional vegetable—though at one point, with some prompting from the prince, he did attempt to take a bite of bread. The result alarmed the mermaid as he didn’t seem to have ever eaten anything so soft before and spat the mouthful back out onto the plate in offence after biting his tongue. The prince made a mental note to try to explain the concept of napkins to the creature the next time they had a meal together.  
Gradually with each item of food the mermaid seemed to feel the need to move away from the prince less and less while he ate, eventually sitting put relatively near to the boy. There was even a little colour returning to his skin as well, though he winced every time he moved too harshly.  
Once the mermaid had eaten his fill, pushing the plate away from himself with a disapproving expression on his face when the prince offered it to him once more, he sank back down into the water again, tiredness taking over his features as he rested against the edge of the tub. The mermaid was more relaxed now, letting his head droop down over one shoulder as he considered the prince. The prince settled back down in front of the bathtub after moving the plate away and they watched each other for a moment, the prince wondering if he had earned enough of the creature’s trust to not be a threat now.  
The prince slowly held out his hand, despite the gesture having not been successful so far. He reached his palm out flat, a little way above the water as the mermaid regarded it. He held still again, and the mermaid made him wait so long that his arm actually began to ache. Eventually the boy sat up in the tub despite his tired eyes, continuing to consider the hand for a second or two longer. Once again the mermaid lifted his own hand from the water, the sound of droplets echoing in the quiet room, and the prince held his breath. The touch was very light, revealing a caution still present from the mermaid, but gentle as the creature traced his fingers over the prince’s own. The prince was surprised at how soft the mermaid’s skin was, though he hadn’t really stopped to think about it. It shocked him to see just how similar to a human the mermaid was. Tracing a crease in the prince’s palm, the mermaid then took his hand back and moved away again, resting against the edge of the tub as though he’d lost interest in the prince now.  
The prince hovered for a second longer, hand still partially outstretched as he stared at the boy across from him. The mermaid seemed unconcerned with the whole ordeal, but the prince had held himself so still he had to remind himself to breathe again.  
Sinking back down into the water, the mermaid’s eyelids looked heavy. He watched the prince lazily from the water until the other boy moved, not wanting to look like he was staring again. The mermaid looked tired now, and the thought didn’t surprise the prince. He stood, and chased about his room briefly, poking around to see if he could find anything that the mermaid might want to help him sleep that didn’t involve drowning one of his pillows. But when he glanced back, the boy had already dropped into sleep.  
The prince stood in the middle of his room for a moment, unsure what to do now that he was alone with the sleeping mermaid once more. Everything felt hushed, even though the creature was still there, breathing softly in the quiet. “Goodnight,” he said simply to the room.  
The mermaid didn’t respond.  
After a lingering second longer, the prince moved again, picking up a few of the things that had been abandoned to a watery doom around his room in the excitement of the evening. He only got as far as returning a handful of books to their shelf before tiredness suddenly hit him, too. He glanced outside to see if he could spot the moon in the now black sky. It was late.  
As soon as he realised it, his body felt heavy. It had been a busy day—leaving the castle that morning felt like it had happened weeks ago now. Quickly changing into his night clothes and extinguishing any candles that had survived the earlier splashes, he crawled into bed and found himself quickly slipping into sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

He had, of course, been late to his lesson the next morning.  
He was supposed to be doing a Latin translation, and he had honestly, _truly_, tried his best to be entertained by it. He had sat down, quill in hand, and begun reading earnestly. But even from the library, he could hear the waves crashing at the bottom of the cliffs and his gaze kept flicking out of the window to the gradually clearing skies and it really was just so hard to care about the Latin phrase for ‘bowl of fruit’ when you knew perfectly well that there was a mermaid sleeping soundly in a bathtub in your bedroom.  
Having all but jumped out of bed when he woke that morning, he had tumbled straight down to the tub to find the mermaid still there, sleeping heavily despite the clattering around him. The prince’s breath caught in his throat. It had been almost a full day, but the boy was still completely mesmerised by the creature’s existence, its tail still dotted with shimmering sea-green scales even in the dull morning light only just creeping in from the window. The mermaid was curled up a little, looking more relaxed and comfortable than the night before and the prince couldn’t help but watch him sleep for a few moments before he’d gotten up to leave for his lesson. He had checked his room on the way out, the aftermath not as dramatic as he remembered now that the puddles of splashed water had been given a chance to dry.  
He didn’t bother with trying to present any kind of excuse to his tutor once he arrived at the library and the tutor didn’t ask. He hadn’t been keen on the lesson to begin with, but the thought of someone rushing into his bedroom to demand he be where he was supposed to be wasn’t worth the risk, even if today’s lesson was particularly dull. He was here, but that didn’t mean he had to pay attention.  
Soon enough, his tutor turned back to his own studies and the prince’s gaze slipped away from his books to the window. From this point in the library he could just about see the window to his own room and he couldn’t help but flick his eyes over periodically as though he’d be able to tell from here if the mermaid was okay inside.  
The sea still rolled and smashed angrily at the base of the cliffs like it had yesterday. Despite the crashing sea, he noticed with a pang that the weather had improved already from the day before, the greyness of the bay lifting and the sun occasionally peeking through the clouds to shine down and lighten the dark colour of the sea. He didn’t feel the normal annoyance he would do at wasting a day like today trapped inside, but he couldn’t help but worry about the ease of returning the mermaid back to the sea if the weather was now clearing.  
He pushed the thought aside for the time being, imagining that he would have to deal with it when the time came, and tried once again to pay attention to the Latin words before him that were blurring together on the page even as he tried to focus on them.  
He had never understood his parents’ insistence that he learn to communicate in the ancient languages. He had questioned them on it once—asking whether he could learn a language from a neighbouring country that could perhaps be of more use—but his thoughts had gone unheard. If he needed to converse with any officials that didn’t share their language, he would be able to work with a translator, they explained. He didn’t _need_ to learn another common tongue, but kings spoke Latin.  
The thought burdened him a little. With no brothers or sisters, he was well aware that his parents’ focus had been solely on him. He never really spent too long thinking about his future as king if he could avoid it. He had been prepared from birth: from his parents’ continuous instruction that “a king shouldn’t do this, a king should only do that!”; to the assumptions and expectations that all the kingdom held for his future. He could see it in the way everyone looked at him—his own servants, his family, even complete strangers visiting the castle on official business. But still, he felt some distance from it in his mind. If he stopped to picture the idea, if anyone ever pointed out a certain responsibility he would have, he could never quite see _himself_ doing it. He assumed that the feelings of obligation and interest would come with age, but so far all he could imagine was some distant stranger carrying out all of his parents’ wishes on his behalf.  
It wasn’t that he had no interest in his kingdom, but perhaps his parents might have realised over the years that there would have been a slightly better chance of engaging him if they hadn’t presented everything in the most boring way they possibly could.  
The prince snapped out of his thoughts, realising that the words he had supposedly been forming had trailed instead into a variety of doodles and scribbles. He stood. He could tell his tutor wasn’t surprised by it; the man barely spared him half a second’s glance to look up from his own reading. The prince wandered away, murmuring some excuse of wanting to check another translation.  
He left the alcove, out-of-sight once he made it to the stairs that spiralled up with the tower. The library was an impressive room and probably would have been a favourite of his in the castle if his purpose for going there hadn’t so often been tied to learning about things he wasn’t at all interested in.  
The library made use of its tower to stretch rows and rows of crowded bookshelves up to the sky, wrapped around a single spiral staircase that wound upwards alongside the books. Each floor of shelves denoted a different subject and the prince trailed upwards, heading towards the shelves dedicated to languages at the very top of the tower—though he had no intention of actually searching for an alternative Latin translation for what he currently thought was a recipe for sand salad.  
He passed by his favourite level, with shelves spilling over with books all about animals, insects, and even creatures rumoured to not exist. The kingdom’s proximity to the ocean brought with it many books emphasising sea-life, and the books here reflected that— but he was familiar enough with it already. There were no reports on mermaid diets or chapters detailing their habitat hidden away next to those on stingrays and angelfish that he might have missed on countless previous inspections.  
He walked around the upper spiral once, not quite sure of where to start. The languages were organised by country, but as far as he knew there were no languages of the sea. He trailed his fingers over the spines of each book, running along each shelf one at a time. It was something he’d liked doing as a child, when the library had only been a sanctuary for reading about and discovering all of the worlds that lay outside of the castle walls, but since he had begun attending his lessons here he couldn’t help but see the library as somewhere he was chained to for hours at a time.  
As a child, he would close his eyes and walk around the circle, blind, but for the guide of the row of books he was following. He would count to a random number and then stop, hoping to find himself pointing at a book he’d never read before.  
He used the technique more logically today, running his hand along each shelf to make sure he didn’t miss any books that might be of interest. He found books on languages he knew and languages he didn’t, a few books he couldn’t even read the name of, some that were detailed studies on entire languages and some books that just described the evolution of a single word. He ran across dictionaries, studies on letter formation and proposed theories about the classification of sounds, but nothing about the sea. Every shelf seemed to get duller and duller, and after a while he began to skip over whole chunks of books that looked like they were all repeats of each other.  
He gave up after his second check, halfway into the third, hands covered in a soft layer of dust and feeling a little foolish that he had thought he could find something about a mythical creature just by looking in the library. He lived in a castle by the ocean, most of the staff had lived a life on the sea before settling here and all of them were extremely superstitious. He had questioned all of them on everything they knew about the sea from the first day he had been taken to play on the beach—if there was any study into the possibility of an aquatic language, he would have heard about it by now. He sighed and sat down at the top of the staircase, not wanting to return to the ground floor to his tutor and admit defeat.  
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to face him without proof of his productivity, he stood again to reach over for a latin book that could act as his cover story. He knew the shelf by heart and followed it by eye to find that the book he’d wanted was partially obstructed by another, larger book. It knocked to the floor as he pulled out the intended book.  
The strange cover caught his eye and he picked it up again, more out of interest than to place it neatly away. He held it to the light of the window to inspect its unusual design. It was a heavy book, mysteriously covered in painted illustrations of hands with a vague title that didn’t give much away, so wide that he was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before on the shelf.  
He turned it over in his hands, unsure that he’d ever seen such a thing before. Flipping through it, he was met by even more illustrations of hands in all shapes and gestures, with diagrams laid out to show motion and movement. He couldn’t quite make any sense of the purpose of it, assuming it to be some kind of overly specific medical textbook or something for casting spells until he stopped to read the words that went along with it.  
It seemed to be a type of language, told by moving a person’s hands around and forming the right shapes. He opened the book open to a random page and pointed to the first illustration his finger landed on. It was simple enough; he just had to trace a circle in the air with his index finger. The text beneath the drawing informed him that he had just said the word _sun_.  
He settled himself down onto the floor with his legs crossed and the book open in his lap, the rest of the world forgotten now in his focus. Too intrigued to sit and read through the book logically from start-to-end, he picked blindly, flicking through the pages at random and reading anything that caught his eye. He copied whatever he found, making shapes with his hand in the best imitation he could manage. Cutting both hands through the air in an hourglass shape meant _pineapple_, according to the text, though he had no one nearby to tell him if he had done a good job.  
He moved onto another page. _Treasure_. And another, _help_, followed by _stomach_. _Morning, happy, fish_. The last one made him grin, wiggling his hand diagonally across from his body. It was so simple he thought even his new friend would understand it— especially if the plate of leftover fish was still waiting in his room.  
The thought made him slap a hand to his forehead.  
_Of course!_ he thought, jumping up and gathering the book into his arms, still open and pressed flat against his chest. He took the stairs two at a time, practically tumbling all the way down in his excitement. Making one quick stop on the way to pick out another armful of books, he rushed out of the library with such a floury of pages flapping and doors slamming that his tutor and the maid dusting the shelves shared a bewildered look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a disclaimer !! The signing in this story is very limited to my vague understanding of BSL that I've picked up when working with children who use BSL. I'm more than happy to correct anything if I've made any mistakes, please just let me know!!


	4. Chapter 4

He all but ran back to his room, weighed down by the pile of books he was carrying. He’d picked up as many as he could carry—books about fish, beaches, and life under the sea—anything that might seem familiar to the mermaid.  
Bursting in through the door of his bedroom, the first thing he saw was the boy in the tub, awake and wide-eyed with alarm at the sudden entrance that was quick to fade into relief when he realised that his visitor was only the prince. Dropping the pile of books down in the armchair he had used last night, the prince sat cross legged by the tub, grinning ear to ear. The mermaid didn’t return the expression, wearing a curious frown over his face at the prince’s overexcited behaviour instead.  
He presented the first book on top of the pile with a flourish. The mermaid’s expression furrowed further in response, the lavish illustrations of hands forming various gestures clearly not impressing him. The prince had been partly expecting the less than enthusiastic response, and he hastily picked up a book considerably larger than the first and filled to the brim with paintings and sketches of fish, beaches, and all manner of creatures that lived in the sea. The mermaid watched him with cautious curiosity as he flipped through both books until he found what he’d tabbed down earlier in the library. He started simple and, checking quickly that the motion was what he remembered it as, pointed down at a simple sketch of a fish as he waved his hand the way the first book instructed him to. The mermaid didn’t even blink in response, but he persevered, doing the motion a few more times before pointing at the mermaid.  
The mermaid looked down at the hand pointing towards him, and then back up to the prince expectantly. The prince tried tapping at the fish picture again but to no avail, and eventually as the blank stare continued he had to resolve on simply picking up the mermaid’s hand to show him directly. The mermaid tensed at the sudden contact, but allowed the prince to flatten out his palm and copied the motion. It took a couple of tries before the mermaid independently knew to make the sign when the prince pointed at the picture.  
The prince nodded enthusiastically at the progress and quickly turned to another picture of a different fish and showing the motion, which the mermaid was quick to mimic. He tried showing a page with a crab for good measure, and received a tentative look in response but no sign, and the prince was glad to see that they both seemed to recognise the concept of a fish in the same way.  
Excited by how things were going, the prince hurriedly dashed around his room, gathering up anything that might be written down in the book and piling it up in front of the bathtub. The mermaid looked more engaged now, like he’d picked up on what was going on, and sat up to lean against the edge of the tub and see the book more clearly. The prince picked out an object, trying to stay within the realms of what the mermaid already knew, showing the shell to the mermaid before turning back to the book. It took him a few minutes, having to trawl through the index for a while before he found what he was looking for, but eventually he found the page. Showing it to the mermaid he looked the page over-and mimicked the action, fingers folded over and palms together, opening and shutting like a clam. _Shell_. The mermaid copied him a second after, pointing down to the shell itself to confirm that they were both saying the same word.   
The prince grinned, looking down to the objects and wondering what to pick next, wanting to go for something that perhaps the mermaid hadn’t seen before. He chose an apple, plucked from the fruit bowl he kept on the window sill for evenings when he couldn’t face the grand dinners in the hall, or was confined to his rooms as punishment for some insult he’d caused. It took him less time to find the sign for this one, as high up in the index as the word _apple_ was.   
It was a simple action, simple enough to make the prince smile to himself as he imitated it, holding his empty hand like it held the apple and biting into the air. Once again the mermaid copied the new word, then pointed to himself before making the sign again. It took the prince a moment to realise what he was asking, but he handed the apple over as soon as he did. The mermaid bit into it, wincing a little at the sweet taste but finishing it off quickly, and the prince felt a stab of guilt. He hadn’t even thought about leaving his new friend with any food, having been able to pick up a handful of fruit from the kitchens on his way to the library. The other boy must have been hungry, but hadn’t had any way of letting the prince know.  
It didn’t take the mermaid long to finish the apple, taking bites until he reached the core, finding out that he wasn’t supposed to eat it the hard way. The prince took it from him and offered his fruit bowl to the mermaid but he shook his head, reaching out to tap a dripping hand to the book again. The prince blinked, realising that the mermaid wanted to learn more, he smiled and flipped through the book to find the next word they could learn.  
They carried on like that for hours, barely noticing the time passing as they each picked out objects and pages of the book to study, learning one word at a time until they could almost form a couple of sentences. There had been the odd word or thought that they had wanted to share but hadn’t been able to find a good translation for. Sometimes they would reference an object directly, but there were also a few words that they had created their own gestures for here and there.  
They were interrupted a while later by a short, soft knock at the door that the prince recognised as his servant’s. He called him in, but the mermaid dropped down into the water at the sight of the door swinging open. The prince held his hand out to the boy to try and show that it was okay and instructed the servant to close the door behind him. The man was grasping a plate of food, having brought it up from the dinner the prince had apparently missed. He turned to the window with a start, not realising it had become so late. It was dark out, the reflection of half a moon against the dark sky the only thing he could see in the blackness of the sea. He hadn’t even thought to light any candles around his room.  
The mermaid looked reluctant to trust this new human, having not seen him, or anyone else in the castle for that matter, since waking the previous night. It took a while for him to even raise out of the water any, and that was after a good few minutes of the prince trying to gesture that there was nothing to fear. He tried to ask the creature how are you a few times, one of the few questions they’d both been able to understand that day, but the mermaid kept low, an uncertain look blooming in his eyes as though he didn’t know what word he could use to express the emotion he was experiencing.  
The servant didn’t look too keen at the prospect of being introduced to the mermaid either, hovering by the door wearily for several minutes while the prince sat cross-legged at the tub trying to convince the mermaid that everything was okay. Eventually the servant bluntly asked if he could leave now, still clutching at the plate of food he’d brought up. The prince shook his head and waved the servant over, scooting across and instructing the man to kneel next to him. The mermaid dropped down lower into the tub, not unlike the way he’d been with the prince the night before, and kept flicking his eyes back to the servant every few seconds or so. The thought startled the prince, making him realise the progress they’d made in only one day. He turned back to the servant.  
“Just watch, okay?” he instructed the man, facing the mermaid and finally catching his attention for long enough to get him to respond to a question or two.   
The man proceeded to blink at the two while they waved and flapped their arms at each other for a few minutes, turning to the prince once it was done to say, “Well done, sir. You seem to have taught it a secret handshake.”  
The prince sent him away.

Over the next couple of days the prince hardly left his room—so engrossed in mimicking gestures were the pair. He only went out if it was absolutely necessary, or if not leaving would result in somebody storming into his room to flap about and shout. Even then, he would be distracted the whole time he was away, and more often than not brought a book with him to carry on practising the gestures. He would likely come back to find the mermaid sleeping, but usually with a book left open and dripped on next to the bathtub.  
They’d been able to learn a handful of words and phrases from the book, making use of whatever items the prince kept around his room or could find unused in the castle, and a few roughly drawn pictures added to the corner of book pages.  
They weren’t interrupted until the afternoon most days, only ever by the servant bringing food or storming in to demand that the prince turn up for his lessons, duties, or dinner. Any time he had to spend away from his room the prince spent lost in thought, certainly more frustrated with boredom these days than he ever had been before. But he found that knowing he had a friend to return to as soon as he was able to sneak away made everything far easier to bear than it ever had been before.  
He had taken to following his servant around, quizzing the man on any and all information he believed to be true about mermaids. There wasn’t much about them that he claimed was good, and almost everything he said the prince ended up taking as exaggerated truths. The man seemed to have some personal vendetta against the lot of them, but refused to keep the conversation going if the prince asked if he’d ever seen a mermaid before. As far as the man was concerned, the sooner the mermaid was healed and gone, the better.   
Really the prince wanted to investigate some storybooks and collections of sea songs, something that might paint a brighter image of his new friend than a man who had spent a life fearing a species believed to lure people to their deaths—but his parents didn’t let such things be kept in the library.  
Dinners were the worst ordeal of all. At least if he had lessons or time in court that his parents wanted him to do for _the sake of the kingdom_ there would be something for him to do to pass the time. The palace dinners had nothing to keep him from missing his friend, the only distractions being the outlandish displays of food served one course at a time, forced conversations with guests who only wanted to win over his parents’ influence on him, and uncomfortable outfits that always had people telling him he looked _dashing_. He would rush back to his room as soon as he’d taken the last bite of the final course, sneaking out before he could be roped into any post dinner discussions or, God forbid, a dance. He’d steal a tray’s worth of leftovers for the mermaid on his way past the kitchens, and recite the signs he’d been practising under the table, ready to detail all of the evening’s activity to the mermaid as soon as he got back. As dull as he found these events, the mermaid enjoyed hearing descriptions of the outfits and food, and the strange activities like dancing and lounging across chairs that visitors seemed to enjoy doing.   
He had found that the mermaid needed to sleep something similar to a human, if an hour or two shorter, but the prince often stayed up late to carry on working his way through memorising as many words and phrases as he could before admitting defeat to sleep, normally rising in the morning by the rude awakening of a splash of water to the face.  
They had started simply, with pictures of fish and water and boats—things that the prince trusted they were both familiar with. From water they went to the sea, and the prince introduced the word _castle_, and they tried to cover the concept of a home together.  
They were able to have longer and longer conversations everyday, the mermaid telling him what trinkets and pictures he recognised from his life in the sea, and mentioning that there were others like him. He seemed to imply that he also had a mother and father in the ocean somewhere, and was insistent on the fact that mermaids all liked to sing. The prince had asked him to repeat himself a few times on that point, but had left it there after a few tries, imagining a translation error of some kind. He couldn’t quite imagine a species that had evolved to not need ears would have particularly wonderful singing voices, but he didn’t want to be rude.  
The prince in turn had tried to explain as much about castle life as he was able to translate to the mermaid. He tried to fill the mermaid in on anything he’d been doing while he was away from the room, whether it was a feast filled with lavishly dressed visitors from surrounding kingdoms, or just a mathematics lesson. The mermaid liked to hear about the parties, and usually wanted to know the details of what people had worn—the mermaid found it incredibly interesting that humans liked to wrap themselves up in intricately detailed materials and swirl around a room talking for a few hours. The prince took to doodling what he saw at these events to help answer the mermaid’s questions later. Unsurprisingly, his parents didn’t take kindly to the habit.  
He discovered one day, getting ready for a court event in an outfit that he hated but his mother insisted on, that the mermaid had quite the sense of humour. A high-pitched breathy sound made him turn around to the mermaid. He looked as though he was laughing, and when the prince asked what the matter was the boy responded by flicking through a few books before settling on a diagram of a particularly outlandish sea slug that the prince apparently currently resembled.  
The thought had stayed with him all night, making him giggle to himself all of a sudden, having to find an excuse to cover his face with a hand or drink.  
He’d snuck away with as much food as he could carry that evening, stuffing cakes and rolls into his pockets, knowing full well he’d stain the clothes and enjoying the thought of his mother finding out.  
When he slunk back into his room, pockets filled with treats and grinning ear to ear, the mermaid had smiled back, having picked up the expression from the prince over the last few days. It was a little smile, not fully spreading across his whole face, almost as though he were shy to make it. But it was a smile that made the prince feel welcomed.  
He quickly changed and settled into the armchair by the tub. He flicked through a sketchbook, filled with sketches and notes that he would make on the beach, of stones, and rock pools, and anything worth noting that had washed up onto the beach. And now, towards the end of the book, a few illustrations of his friend.   
He had barely opened the book before the mermaid pulled at it, wanting to see what the prince was working on. He had been fascinated the first time the prince had drawn in front of him, watching the motion of his pencil running across the paper like it was witchcraft. The prince had been reluctant to share the book initially, conscious of the nearby water that could ruin all of his work, but eventually had shown the mermaid each page. The mermaid had been interested in every drawing, but was particularly interested in the few drawings the prince had made of him over the last few days, quiet sketches on evenings when there hadn’t been anyone to disturb them. He liked to look at the drawings of himself—it almost reminded the prince of a child seeing their reflection for the first time.  
He had never spent much time with children his own age. Growing up, his time with others had always only ever been through necessity—their job or his duty—and as such he had always assumed that he was someone who preferred his own company over time spent with others.  
The prince wasn’t used to being around someone who was interested in him. The closest friend he’d ever really had was his servant, who merely tolerated the prince—at best. It was strange having someone who liked him—and he did think the mermaid liked him. They could spend long hours sharing stories, often not sleeping until late into the night, and the mermaid was always wanting to know about the trinkets in his room and anything that went on in the castle. The prince had never had anyone to share his things with, or who took an interest in his sketches and journals—he was so unused to it that he had become protective  
It was strange and he had been unsure of how to respond at first, but he warmed to the attention quickly and tried to return interest in the mermaid’s life in turn. He hadn’t been down to the beach in days, but he found himself without much desire to go. It was as if he was missing his often held desire to escape from his home. Now that he knew there was a friend waiting for him, he didn’t feel so out of place in the castle.  
If he’d known much about these things he would have realised that he no longer felt lonely.


	5. Chapter 5

He was in trouble.  
He’d thought he could get away with skipping lessons today. He’d been the day before and had only missed one, two… _maybe_ four last week. He’d tried to go—he really had—but it was just so hard to make himself focus, and once he’d gotten caught in a conversation with his mermaid friend—usually starting with _hello, good morning, would you like to eat something?_—he just couldn’t tear himself away. He knew now that the boy didn’t like being left alone in the prince’s room with only a lock to keep the other humans out, and once he discovered that, it was near impossible to excuse leaving the boy alone.  
They’d cornered him on the stairs, attempting to sneak down into the kitchens to steal some breakfast.  
In a way it was a relief. They hadn’t come into his room. It would have all been over if they had.  
His servant had warned him about this. He’d made some comment early last week, and perhaps he’d said something again a few days later. _Sir, don’t be pushing your luck. With a situation like you’re in_—there’d been a hard look there, as though to remind the boy that he wasn’t the only person involved—_I’d like to think you’d be as responsible as possible_. The man would be unbearable now.  
It hadn’t been all that bad, in the grand scheme of things. Nothing he hadn’t heard before—_you’re letting our people down_, and _don’t you understand the loyalty you have to this kingdom_ and _why can’t you get over this foolishness and accept what you owe to your kingdom_—he’d lulled himself into a false sense of security, almost thinking he was getting away with it.  
Then his father had spun some line about not being able to trust him, that he obviously wasn’t mature enough to be responsible for his own actions. He needed a chaperone again, someone knocking at his door early in the morning to insist he made it to where he needed to be on time, and didn’t leave before it was finished. He was expected at the court for the rest of the week to help discuss the kingdom’s issues. He would be present at every meal, proud to represent the castle to whoever was visiting. And he would, of course, be making up the classes he had missed that week on top of everything else.  
There had been some other lines, the usual drivel about what a disappointment he was to them, and then he was sent away to his room. In the dim cloud of frustration and panic that hung around him now, that final line was a sudden burst of sunlight and satisfaction shining through, and he couldn’t help but smile as he walked back to his room. They didn’t know, of course, that now more than ever his room was the only place in the castle—in the whole kingdom, really—that he wanted to be.  
He trailed around his room for a handful of minutes when he got back, pulling things from the shelf to fiddle with and then putting them back away in irritation. He complained about his parents of course, sometimes verbally and sometimes with his hands, and all the while the mermaid followed him around the room with his eyes, perhaps knowing to just let the prince get everything out of his system before commenting himself.  
Eventually the prince tired, reasoning that it wasn’t all that bad. They hadn’t known about his friend. He still had some freedom in the castle, at least in his own room. It was just a few extra weeks of taking things seriously before they let their watch slip a little and he could push his boundaries again. It was more severe than he was used to, but it wouldn’t be any different this time around.  
He told all of this to the mermaid now, adding in the odd moan about his mother and father and the general castle staff as he paced his bedroom. The mermaid watched until he was done, looking a little unconvinced as the prince concluded that everything would be fine. The prince laughed to himself, judging that his friend probably wasn’t concerned with the runnings of the castle that he was currently home to.  
_I think_, he started, slowly trying to put the signs together to make sense of what he was trying to say. _You care more because I don’t have food_. He hoped the joke was clear, sometimes they could be stuck for twenty minutes at a time trying to get across ideas one word or sign at a time. Two days ago, the prince had resorted to drawing a short story board. The thought made him smile now.  
The mermaid paused, but then responded with a sign, just the one, by pushing the tips of his fingers together. His hands made a sort of triangle and he kept eye contact with the prince.  
_I don’t know it_, the prince replied. But he did.  
The mermaid just made the sign again.  
_I said_, the prince repeated himself, _I don’t know it_. He picked up the book as if to prove it, flicking through as though he was trying to find the sign and really hoping he’d find something to distract his friend with.  
The mermaid reached out to the spine of the book, water from the bath dripping down to the floor, a little trickling onto the pages as he pushed the book away from where the prince could read it. He didn’t look up from the book for a second, not wanting to see what he knew was still there. The mermaid studied from the book even when the prince was away and didn’t often think to dry his hands before. The pages were all buckled and textured to show for it. There were even a few pages where the ink had run, pictures and words blurring together, impossible to differentiate between now.  
His hands pushed into a triangle again and the prince bit his lip, avoiding the mermaid’s eyes that still followed him.  
_Home._  
The prince shook his head.  
He’d dropped the book and the mermaid gripped onto his hand instead, trying to catch his eye as though willing the prince to look at him and understand.  
_He can’t go_, the prince thought to himself, staring adamantly at the floor. _Not now, he only just got here, we were only just starting to understand each other—_  
He’d been avoiding thinking about it, he knew. Deep down in the corners of his thoughts, he knew that he couldn’t keep the mermaid locked up in his room unable to swim. Breathing the same water every day. It wasn’t fair. Even if they were becoming friends it didn’t make it fair. He knew that someday soon, he would have to help his new friend return to his home again. It had been over a week, and he hadn’t expected it to be so soon. It wasn’t fair. _It wasn’t fair._  
He didn’t want to lose his friend. Not now that he was being guarded under lock-and-key and wouldn’t even have the consolation of knowing that he had a friend to come back to at the end of the day. But it wasn’t just that—he didn’t want to come back to this empty room with only the memory of how exciting the whole adventure had been. Even if he wasn’t currently under strict rule, he didn’t think that all the things he’d enjoyed before—sneaking to his favourite floor on the library, running down to the beach to collect anything and everything he could find—could ever feel as bright as it did before.  
He would be alone again.  
The mermaid tapped him, twice and firmly, on the wrist and the abruptness made the prince look up, snapping out of his reverie. He motioned for the prince to stand, and he followed the order. The next instruction was harder to understand as the mermaid didn’t use a sign, just kept waving towards himself. It wasn’t until the mermaid pointed directly at the prince and then tapped at the water repeatedly that the prince understood that yes, actually, he did want him to step into the bathtub. He didn’t react right away, but decided to go along with it—worse case scenario would be wet socks. He pulled off his shoes but didn’t bother with the rest of his clothes, stretching his leg over into the water and teetering as he stepped in, making sure to avoid where the mermaid’s tail lay curled along the bottom of the tub.  
It was cold. He wondered why the mermaid hadn’t said anything, or if he even felt it the way the prince did.  
The mermaid gave him enough time to step in and settle comfortably onto the edge of the tub before reaching up to grip both of the prince’s hands, pulling him lightly but firmly down and closer to the water. It was freezing and the prince didn’t realise that the mermaid was about to pull his head under the water until it was too late. He tensed up and only just had enough time to gasp a breath of air before he was under and swarmed by a mass of bubbles.  
The first clear thought he had was that it was a trick, that mermaids really do hypnotise humans and pull them down to the depths of the ocean to drown them.  
No, the first thought he had was that it was _cold_. Colder than the day he’d snuck down to the beach to watch snow float down from fluffy skies and and into the sea, each flake existing only for a fraction of a moment before they disappeared away into non-existence again. Colder than the autumn day he’d fallen into the water and had to trail back to the castle, dripping and shivering the whole way back along the shore without a change of clothes or shoes.  
_Then_ his heart beat with a pang of betrayal.  
It took at least three seconds for him to hear the song. When he did his eyes flew open and he gasped out his single breath. He resisted jumping up for more air.  
The song held him in it’s grip.  
It started as a soft hum, and he was sure he wasn’t listening to it with his ears. He felt it all around his body, sinking into his skin. He could hear it in his heart. The song rose up, high and soft, and he would swear later that he could even _see_ it. He could see the music and he saw the ocean. He _felt_ it, felt the great depths of it all around him, swarming and flying past as he swam through the icy water. There were others all around, others like him—no, like the boy who sang the song—mermaids. More mermaids, and they were everywhere. The glint of a castle, rising up from swarming lines that just about formed into a coral bed before his mind’s eye was pulled away again. The pang of being homesick, of missing your own kind. The sea, yearning for the sea and feeling its pull everyday. Being away from home.  
And a pain rising up from his chest like nothing he’d ever felt before.  
Air. He needed air. His lungs were burning.  
A wave of water splashed up over his room as he burst up, gasping deeply. He was dimly aware that everything nearby was drenched again, but he didn’t care. Gulping in the air, his thoughts split out faster than he could control.  
“Is that how you—”  
He caught himself halfway through the sentence, waiting for his breathing to even out before he could flounder for the signs that would explain what he was thinking—if he even knew what that was.  
_You—_  
Talk—  
His mind was racing too fast for him to be able to keep up with what signs he had learned that past week. The mermaid watched him patiently and, giving up, the prince simply pointed at the water and then back to his ears. The mermaid nodded, slowly. This was how he talked—how he communicated when he was in the ocean, with other mermaids.  
_Your home_, the prince said, mimicking the mermaid’s earlier sign without looking up at him.  
The mermaid reached out, cautiously at first, and laid a dripping hand against the prince’s cheek to lift his chin. Though he’d been itching to touch the mermaid’s jewelled tail since the moment he first saw him, aside from the few times they’d touched hands while swapping food or correcting a sign, the prince had tried not to make contact with the other boy. He’d almost felt afraid to touch him, as though it would startle the mermaid. The sudden contact of cool skin on his face made him jump, jerking his head up and being caught in the mermaid’s stare. He reddened a little, aware suddenly that no one had held his face since he’d been a young child.  
Their gazes held and the prince let himself forget for a second, falling into the liquid depths of the mermaid’s eyes and seeing only teal for a moment. _It’ll be okay_, the look in the mermaid’s eyes told him. _Everything will be okay_. Would it? He squeezed his eyes shut.  
Sighing, he pulled away from his friend, the hand dropping to the water again. The boy was right, of course. The prince had let himself believe that he could live with a mermaid in his bedroom, that everything would continue as the last few days had with fun and secrets and sneaking up food from the kitchens—but the mermaid was right. He’d only ever meant for the boy to be stuck here, away from the water until he was well enough to swim again, and now he was. The last few days had already been pushing time, and that had gotten him into plenty of trouble. He just hadn’t wanted to admit that their time together was over. But the creature needed to return to the sea. He couldn’t keep the poor thing locked up here forever just because it alleviated his boredom for a few hours a day. It wasn’t fair.  
_It wasn’t fair._  
He was tired, all of a sudden, and his body felt heavy, weighted down with water. He dropped his head forward and rested against the boy’s shoulder. He felt the mermaid tense for a moment but he wasn’t pushed away. Instead, a light hand was pressed against his back, as though the other boy could sense his need for comfort.  
He felt young then. He just wanted to lie down and cry and kick his heels until a servant stopped by and gave him something nice to eat. It didn’t make the bad things go away, but it was enough to distract him until the next bump, or broken toy, or dropped ice cream. Sometimes, if he kicked loudly enough, his mother might stop by with a comment. _That is not how a prince should behave_.  
There weren’t any treats or snacks to distract him. The mermaid didn’t tell him to pull himself together and think of his kingdom. He just held him, and played with the prince’s hair, as though he’d never felt something like it before and was promising that everything would be okay.  
The room was quiet now, dimming down into grey as somewhere far away beyond the window, the sun slowly trailed towards the sea.  
They laid together in the bathtub, still, until the prince began to shiver.


	6. Chapter 6

It was a clear day, nothing like the heavy mist that had hung low over the bay the last time the prince had visited the beach, and he knew that if anyone were to look out of one particular kitchen window from the castle they would have an unobstructed view of the prince and the mermaid sitting together. Well, one of them was sitting. The other was floating nonchalantly in the water, flicking his tail about contentedly and occasionally causing a splash.  
The prince was kneeling on a short pier that was used for deliveries of fresh fish to the kitchen, well-hidden from most of the castle by the dark cliffs that his home stood on. They had chosen this location on purpose; a shallow pool connecting to the ocean only at high tide and so was largely unused once the weekly deliveries had been made.  
The servant had left a little while ago. It was his day off, and since being cornered on the stairs last night and being told that he would be needed to sneak both the prince and the mermaid back down to the water, he’d been in a fowl mood all morning. He’d been drinking, and hadn’t been best pleased at the prospect of spending his free time cleaning up the prince’s messes. He’d eventually agreed, after many _I told you so_s once the prince had admitted the trouble with his parents, and they agreed to meet at dawn—before anyone in the castle would be awake to spot them.   
The servant’s complaining and lecturing aside, it had been a much smoother journey than the first had been, and only seemed to take half of the time. As they travelled down, the prince pointed out features of the landscape and castle that the mermaid wouldn’t have seen on his way in. The mermaid stared around at his surroundings, wide eyes flicking back and forth at everything the prince pointed out, while the man carrying him grumbled to himself about a headache.  
At the base of the cliff, hidden from most of the castle by the little grotto that lead to the pool of water, the mermaid had tensed up, becoming restless as soon as he spotted the sea. He’d twisted and kicked in the servant’s arms almost as soon as the man had stepped onto the pier and dived into the water, quickly swallowed up by the depths of the ocean and disappearing within seconds. The prince’s heart had stuttered for a second as though he’d dropped his journal or a favourite shell into the water, followed by a particularly tense few minutes of hardly daring to hope that he would spot the brightly-coloured tail of his friend cutting through the water again.  
The mermaid returned as suddenly as he had left, bursting through the water with a dramatic splash that completely drenched the prince, but the boy found he was too busy laughing to mind.  
His friend already looked healthier, skin glowing and eyes bright in a way that they hadn’t been for the past few days. The smile that lit up his whole face was in no way shy now, and he pulled himself up to lean the top half of his body on the pier, his tail still kicking back and forth in the water as though he was reminding himself that it was there. Outside of the shadowy castle, his scales became a vibrant teal in the clear morning air, brighter even than the day the prince had found him. His skin took on an almost pearlescent quality, reflecting the patterns of the waves that lapped around him.   
The prince was aware that he should return to the castle promptly, and normally would have been worried about being seen on a day as clear as today. Instead, he was far more concerned with his friend. The thought that they were about to separate hung over him, but he didn’t want the mermaid to see that he was upset. He didn’t want to put his feelings of loneliness above the mermaid’s return home.   
The journey to the water had been a fun little distraction from their parting—sneaking out was always exciting and getting to share that with a friend had made it feel like an adventure. But now he could feel the mermaid’s departure looming over them. They only had so long until the tide began to go out again, and the mermaid would then be trapped here in the pool without any escape until someone from the castle spotted him. Even so, the prince wasn't quite ready to admit that it was time to go.   
He knew he was rambling, if it was even possible to ramble with your hands. He was talking about anything and everything, how much nicer the weather was today, predicting what might happen once he got back to the castle—anything that might keep the mermaid there with him for a second longer. The mermaid watched patiently while the prince tumbled over and mixed up his gestures in a way that could only be described as stuttering, filling in the gaps at any chance he could get to jump into the conversation.  
And then, out of nowhere, the prince ran out of things to say.  
He floundered for a second, moving his hands as though it would help him think of something else to say. The mermaid reached up from the water and gripped onto the prince’s hands, shaking his head. He looks happy, the prince thought to himself sadly, and then chastised himself—not for the first time that morning—for putting his own wants before the mermaid’s need to go home. He looked down at their clasped hands, the mermaid’s skin so much paler than his own, and wondered when he’d last held anyone’s hands for comfort. He bit his lip and kept his gaze fixed down when the mermaid let go, not realising that something was being handed to him until the mermaid poked him in the face with affectionate annoyance and a dripping finger.  
It was a shell, a type that the prince had never seen before. It was long and thin, and lighter than any that he’d ever found before, twisting around delicately until it reached a fine point. Completely white, the shell shone iridescent all over like mother of pearl. It was one of the most beautiful shells the prince had ever seen, and he was moved that the mermaid had thought to find a gift that would fit so well with the rest of his collection.  
The mermaid tugged at the prince’s hands again, pointing intentionally at a strip of seaweed the prince had missed while inspecting the shell. It was threaded through a slight hole at the top, and the prince realised once the mermaid gestured to his own throat that the shell was meant to be worn as a necklace.  
He pulled the band—surprisingly sturdy, to say it was a ribbon of seaweed tied with a simple knot—over his hair and felt the light weight of its shell settle against his chest. His hand lingered by it for a second, feeling the grooves and smoothness of the shell and getting used to something that he knew he would wear for the rest of his life. He was just about to look up again at the mermaid—just getting his hands ready in a sign of gratitude, and maybe an apology for not having thought to bring his own parting gift—when he felt a sudden grip on his wrists. There was a sharp tug at his arms, and for the second time in two days he found himself being dragged down into the depths by his friend.  
The first thought was again betrayal, thinking that perhaps the mermaid was angry at being trapped and the prince was about to be dragged away to a watery doom, but he pushed the thought away quickly this time.   
The shock of falling had meant that he hadn’t managed to take a breath as he was pulled in. His lungs were already starving for air, the cold water that smothered him trying to creep into his throat. He felt his body beginning to convulse and choke. He pulled his wrists away from the mermaid’s clutch and tried to push himself up towards the shimmering light. But they were too deep already and despite the clear sky, the water was cold enough to slow his movements—movements which were being dulled by water-laden clothes and muscles starved of oxygen for too long.  
He kept his jaws clamped shut for as long as he could, one hand forced over his face, and held the breath for a long as he was able. He felt supportive hands gripping his arms and reached out his other hand, desperately clutching at the mermaid’s shoulder in hope that the boy would know to drag him back up to the surface. His lungs were going to explode. All he could feel was the desperate fire of his lungs begging for air, burning him from the inside out as his limbs dulled, numb with cold.  
It was too much. He took a breath, gasping and knowing that it would be water, not air, which flooded his lungs.  
With a burst of bubbles that swarmed his vision for a second, the prince gasped in a breath of air.  
The realisation made him gasp again, and again there was a swarm of bubbles all around, with the relief of air flowing into his lungs. He panted and steadied himself in the mermaid’s arms as best he could, waiting for his heart to stop pounding before he could ask what was happening.   
The mermaid kept a steady grip on his arm, keeping him afloat. Watching the prince grow used to his new ability to breathe underwater, the mermaid waited until he had calmed down before reaching out to the shell hung around the prince’s neck, keeping one hand firmly on the boy’s elbow.  
The mermaid pulled at the shell, moving it so the prince could see it through the water, then reaching out to tap at the prince’s throat. Whatever the shell was, whether enchanted or a gift from a sea witch, and however it worked, it was giving the prince the ability to breathe underwater.  
It was a strange sensation, and the fact that he could still see and feel the water all around him had the prince convinced that the shell could stop working at any point, leaving him grasping at the shell unconsciously every few seconds or so in case it slipped off.   
The mermaid pulled away a little, encouraging the prince to try to swim on his own. He knew how to swim, and despite his parents’ best efforts to keep him away from the water, he was actually quite good at it. But he wasn’t used to swimming with such heavy clothing on, and if he’d known that this would be how his day was going to go he certainly wouldn’t have worn his boots. They were good for climbing up and down the cliffs he lived on, but he couldn’t say the same when it came to kicking through water.  
The mermaid gave him a moment to flounder about, getting used to swimming without letting the necklace slip off. It was hard work. The mermaid, having found his struggling amusing at first as he flicked his tail and floated graceful arcs and circles around the prince, eventually got bored and, grasping him by one hand, pulled the prince through the water.  
The mermaid swam fast, even towing another person behind him. It was lucky that the prince could breathe now because the gasp he choked on as he was first pulled along would have surely drowned him otherwise. Water and streams of bubbles rushed past the two of them and the prince struggled to keep up with the whirl of colour that streamed all around.  
Everything was a vibrant shade of blue, or green, or silver. With the clear weather that day the ocean had cleared too, and the prince felt like he could see for miles, vast stretches of turquoise in every direction that never seemed to end. He was fixated with the sheen of light dancing on top of the water’s surface—he’d grown up watching the waves dance around the castle from his bedroom window, but he’d never seen a wave from below before.  
And the fish! Sometimes, in the summer months, he liked to climb around the cliffs’ edge and inspect the rock pools. There wasn’t ever much to see, the odd crab or murky brown fish that had become trapped as the tide pulled out. It was nothing like this. They were iridescent, reflecting the greens of the sea and the light that pierced down through the water from the sky in all colours: pinks, purples, reds—yellows, even. They seemed to trust the mermaid, either feeling comfortable swimming alongside the boys or curious about where they were going, and they passed through whole shoals of fish the prince had only ever seen on the pages of books before. He caught the mermaid’s eye, and the boy made the first sign they’d learnt together, startling a burst of bubbling laughter out of the prince. He made the motion back. _Fish_.  
The mermaid twisted then, and they tumbled gracefully down to the bed of sand below. Soft strands of seaweed reached up to greet them. The prince, daringly, let go of the mermaid’s hand to pull himself closer to inspect the plant life. It was just as bright as the fish, vibrant greens that stretched up towards the sun despite their depth underwater, littered with snails and hiding away more skittish fish and crabs that scurried about on the sea bed. But these weren’t snails like the slime things that ate up the vegetables in the castle kitchens. For starters, they were the size of his fist, and their bodies were translucent, practically glowing with the same colour as the mermaid’s gem-like tail. The shells were utterly unusual in their beauty, completely smooth and covered in patterns he'd never seen before. The prince’s fingers itched to pluck one up to keep in his room but he resisted. He was still dealing with the fallout from the last living thing he had taken from the ocean.  
The mermaid called his attention back, tapping him on the arm and pointing out to the ocean, far enough away from the pair that the light began to grow dimmer. The prince could just make out two murky silhouettes, thinking at first that they might be fish, or sharks even, before realising that they were other mermaids. One looked like it had curls like his friend, but the other had a mass of long hair that floated all out in the sea around their head.  
The prince watched as his friend waved, flicking his tail about excitedly and floating up into the water above the prince from the motion. He seemed to remember the prince a moment later, dropping back down looking apologetically but with his attention still clearly on the other pair.  
The prince put the tips of his fingers together. _Home_.  
The mermaid looked between the two figures and the prince a few times before settling on a nod.  
He sang, briefly, and the prince closed his eyes to understand better. Something about return, the home he had seen before, and a feeling of tightness and impatience in his chest before he opened his eyes again. He gave his hand willingly to the mermaid, and the boy began to pull him quickly towards the surface.  
They resurfaced with the spray of a crashing wave, the prince shaking out his wet hair and rubbing the salt water from his eyes.  
The mermaid glanced at him shyly from under his eyelashes, reaching with a fist to make a circular motion over his chest. _Sorry_. The prince reached out to stop him, shaking his head. _Home_, he replied firmly.   
The mermaid looked at him with wide eyes for a second, but then nodded, resolved. The brief look of sadness was the first indication the prince had had that the mermaid might feel as regretful for their parting as he did and the thought made him reach out, splashing clumsily in the water until he had gripped onto the mermaid, throwing his arms around the boy's shoulders. The mermaid floundered at first from the effort of keeping two people above water, but returned the gesture once they were steady again.   
Pushing away, the prince flicked his hand down from his chin. _Thank you_. He reached for the shell at his neck, thinking it was time to return it, but this time it was the mermaid who stopped him, taking the shell from his hands without lifting the band from his neck.   
He held the shell to his mouth and blew into it. To the prince’s surprise, it played a short note, sounding not dissimilar to the mermaid’s singing.  
_Sing_, the mermaid said, pushing the shell against the prince’s chest. _And I will be here_.  
The prince didn't have the chance to say anything before the mermaid turned away, jumping into the water with a quick flick of his tail. He kept his hand tight around the shell as he watched his friend’s tail disappear into the water, knowing then that they would see each other again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! again just a mention that I have very limited knowledge of BSL! If I made any mistakes please do let me know!


	7. Chapter 7

The prince, who was supposed to be in a lesson at that moment, was instead sitting on a rock surrounded by the sea, giving his full attention to a story being told by another mermaid. He had to wonder what his tutors would think if they could see him.  
A lot of the story was lost on the prince, either due to the limits of the hand gestures the two of them knew or the odd mermaid idiom he was unfamiliar with, but it seemed to be some kind of folklore or fairytale. It was the sort of story that he had been told as a child to warn him away from dangerous places and people.  
From what the prince could make out, it was the story of a mermaid who’d fallen in love with a sailor. She’d begged the sea to let them be together forever, and the sea had responded by drowning the man’s ship in a late-night storm. The ship wasn’t far from where the mermaid and the prince were sitting now, buried underwater and haunted by the ghosts of the sailors that had been lost with the ship. It was rumoured that they still lingered to protect a trunkful of treasure hidden within the boat—or maybe it was that they wanted revenge on the mermaid. The prince wasn’t quite clear on that point.  
_I don’t believe you_, the prince announced when the mermaid was finished.  
The mermaid responded by pushing the prince off the rock. He squeezed his eyes shut tight as he fell into the water and held a breath reflexively—not that he needed to.  
Breathing still felt strange to him under the water, and he had to wait until his lungs were about to explode before his body could be convinced to gasp for air. He’d kept the necklace on since the mermaid had given it to him, the cold presence of the shell against his chest constantly reminding him of his connection to the sea when he was alone in the castle, or stuck with his parents.  
They were always flittering around him now. If it wasn’t his parents it was a servant, or a tutor—at one point a member of the kitchen staff had even stopped by to remind him of a job he was supposed to be doing at that moment. It was a headache; he’d never been so fussed over in his entire life, and he’d never been quite so desperate to get away from it.  
More concerned with what he was doing when he was needed than what he did when he wasn’t, no one at the castle had picked up on his absences yet. It meant that most of the visits he had made to his friend had been at night or in the early hours of the morning when the rest of the ocean was asleep or only just waking up, and the only other living things they saw glittered out from the shadows and kept their distance. A visit in the middle of the day, like today, was unusual and if he was honest with himself he probably should not have done it. But if he’d had to sit through one more lesson on political disagreements he did not understand or care about he was going to implode. And no one at the castle had noticed yet.  
Well, one man had.  
The prince’s servant had been keeping a particularly close eye on the boy since they’d returned the mermaid to the sea. He had thought that the man would leave the issue alone once the mermaid was no longer his responsibility, but he had been wrong. If anything, the man was more concerned with the boy’s actions, stopping him every time they crossed paths to leave him with some message of warning or insistence that he did not know what he was dealing with. The prince found the whole thing a bit tedious.  
He’d stopped him that morning, catching the prince before the boy could run away and leaving the prince with one of his more foreboding cautions.  
_Your parents are beginning to notice how tired you are_, he had said. _You should stop this silliness, sir, before that creature—_ He’d pursed his lips, as though he had more to say but decided against it, turning away instead and only saying _nothing good will come of this_.  
There was a light touch on his arms, and the prince opened his eyes to find the mermaid looking into his face, curious to see why the prince hadn’t opened his eyes yet. The prince blinked a few times, his eyes used to the slight sting of the salt water now, and tried not to think about breathing. He found that whenever he became conscious of it it his chest would become tighter.  
If he left now, he might still be able to get back to the castle in time for the end of his lesson. He could make up some excuse, maybe about falling asleep in the bath. Maybe that would be enough to convince them why his hair was wet. And his clothes. If he left now, maybe they wouldn’t have even noticed that he was gone. He could go now, and not get in trouble, and he’d already gotten to spend time with the mermaid.  
The mermaid was watching him expectantly, his hair swaying in time with the current and the scales on his tail glittering as he moved. He had yet to let go of the prince’s arm, and as his hair floated around his head the prince could see flashes of white skin where his ears should have been. He’d gotten used to it after some time, but it was still a strange sight.  
The mermaid was close enough that the prince could pick out the colours in his eyes, calm seas of teal today that only stirred with a little concern for his friend. The prince couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his friend—all at once familiar and still so strange—and the mermaid mimicked the expression in response.  
_I want to go_, the mermaid told him, making the sign for ship for good measure. The prince pulled a face.  
_But you think there are ghosts there._  
The mermaid nodded eagerly, then put two fists together and shook his hands up and down.  
_And treasure._  
He should go. He should go back to the castle, and finish those calculations his tutor had left him with, the ones he found impossibly hard. If he left now it would make his mother happy, and prove that his servant had nothing to worry about. No one would have noticed he had left.  
He held out his hand. _Let’s go._  
The mermaid didn’t hesitate before taking the outstretched hand, his grip firm but gentle as he pulled the prince through the water. They were no longer reluctant with each other now, comfortably holding hands or onto each other when the mermaid wanted to get somewhere faster than the prince could swim. It was almost unrecognisable from their tentative start, and the prince felt warmth bloom in his chest whenever he thought about how their friendship had grown.  
It didn’t take them long to reach the ship, swimming down and over a coral reef that the prince itched to stop and explore. Layers upon layers of it grew in all sorts of shades of tourmaline, mint, aquamarine—even brighter fish drifted in and out lazily and unconcerned by the shadows of the boys who passed over them. Seaweed and anemones grew in between the cracks, bright splashes of turquoise easily as vibrant as the flowers that grew in his father’s gardens in spring. Outside of the water, the sky had been bright to the point of a white-out, but underwater the light that trickled in was soft and distorted, mixing and playing with the shadows as the water swayed. Everything felt so tranquil and there was so much to see that the prince had almost forgotten about the ship by the time they came upon it.  
The boat seemed to appear all of a sudden as they swam over a bank, lodged into the seabed as though it had grown there with the coral. The reef had built itself up and around the ship, giving the appearance that it was slowly sinking into the seabed. The prince was unsure what colour the ship had started its life as, but it had faded to a pale shade of sea green, showing the length of time it had been lost underwater. It was all rough edges and broken masts, rotting sails hanging down and drifting back and forth with the sway of the current. It was a serene sight, the way it was being taken over by underwater life.  
_It’s beautiful_, he said once he realised they’d stopped. The mermaid agreed. _But I can’t see ghosts._  
_Yet_, the mermaid added. 

The first problem was that the prince couldn’t see.  
Well, no, the first problem had been that they couldn’t find a way in. Most of the entrances were blocked up and in some areas the coral had even grown high enough to block some of the windows. They had had to force their way in by breaking through, and the prince regretted the disturbance it made as they crawled into the silent ship.  
The third problem was that the mermaid had excitedly darted off into the ship as soon as they had gotten in, leaving the prince alone to stumble after him in the shadows. He seemed to be able to see better than the prince could in the dark ship, and floated ahead confidently without worrying about tripping over chairs or knocking into walls he hadn’t seen coming.  
He was a much stronger swimmer than the prince and would often shoot off to the first thing that grabbed his attention whenever they found new places to explore, and normally the prince didn’t mind so much, happy to take his time looking over the intricate details of the seabeds and oceans that the mermaid was probably used to seeing. But this time, alone in a shipwreck that could fall apart at any moment, it was hard not to feel resentful—especially after his leg had slipped through a rotten floorboard and he had to attempt to free himself with no one there to help him other than a large crab that gradually scuttled too close for comfort.  
It hadn’t been too bad at first, not until he’d noticed the way the ship breathed with the motion of the current, tilting and moaning in and out if you concentrated enough. It felt like the ship leaned in on itself like a pile of sticks, and the prince was convinced that touching the wrong thing could make the whole thing collapse in on itself. He was sure that the ship must have been beautiful, even in its abandoned and decaying state, but he didn’t linger long enough in any room to find out.  
The light inside the ship was a dim blue, every room was heavy with shadows that moved in time with the water, putting the prince on edge and making him jump each time he caught motion in the corner of his eye. The rotting furniture and sea life that had made their homes in the wreck were constant reminders of how long the ship had been lost to the seabed, empty and alone, and the prince felt he could believe that there were angry sailors haunting the winding hallways. Every now and then he caught a flash of the mermaid’s tail or hair and he chased after it as quickly as he could manage, desperate to remind himself that he wasn’t completely alone in the boat.  
They caught up in a large salon, the mermaid smiling brightly when he saw the prince and asking where he had been. The prince tried not to be cross, just grateful to have caught up with his friend again, asking, _Where did you go?_  
The mermaid flicked two fingers back and forth from his eyes. _Explore_.  
The prince found his smile had twisted into a frown, still a little upset that his friend hadn’t waited for him, but he tried to push the feeling to one side, not wanting to waste the time they had together now on feeling bitter.  
A sudden creaking groan from the ship made them both jump, looking around with wide eyes, the prince having gripped onto the mermaid’s arm in fear. The mermaid smiled nervously, and signed with one hand. _The ship_. The prince smiled back, but it was strained.  
Something brushed past the prince’s legs then and he jumped back, colliding straight into the mermaid. His friend held him, but started laughing, and something in the prince’s chest felt icy at the sound of it.  
The mermaid pointed at the culprit, letting go of the prince, a fish that had just slunk past his leg. He was still laughing, and flashed his hands about to explain. _It’s a ghost!_  
The icy feeling in the prince’s chest solidified and he pushed the mermaid away. _Stop_.  
The mermaid pulled his hands away, surprised at the prince’s reaction.  
He was annoyed, and he could feel it coming out in the expression of his hands. He didn’t want to be annoyed, and he knew that the mermaid hadn’t really done anything wrong, but he was cold, and tired, and a little bit afraid, and feeling alone with the mermaid was far worse than feeling alone at the castle.  
_I want to go_.  
_Okay_, the mermaid reacted to his annoyance with anger. _Go_.  
With a flick of his tail he darted to the other side of the room.  
Neither boy moved to leave. The prince floated alone in the middle of the room with his arms wrapped around himself and found that his annoyance faded quickly. He was instead surprised that he could feel anger towards his only friend, and the thought made him want to run away and hide in his bed. He wanted to leave the ship, and swim back to the castle, but he never really wanted to be at the castle and there was a twisting feeling in his chest that kept him frozen on the spot.  
His earlier fears of the ship’s darkness and strange noises had been flooded by the fear that he’d angered his friend.  
The prince hadn’t really looked around at the room they were in yet, and scanned it now. Anything was better than watching his friend’s back, turned away from the prince and looking as tense as the prince felt. It was a sort of bedroom, with space for dressing and eating and lounging, too. He was sure it must have been beautiful; he could pick out the odd piece of furniture or peeling wallpaper that suggested royalty, or at least a very stately lord or two, might have traveled in once upon a time. But now everything was hidden in shadows and rot.  
In the corner there were a few rows of shelving which looked as though they still had books lined along them. He drifted towards the shelves slowly, his interest semi-peaked, when a strange object caught his eye. He saw the mermaid turn in the corner of his eye as he swam down to inspect the object, but he was too intrigued to look back to see the sign he had made. It was a box, with what looked like a funnel twisting around at the top of it—a gramophone. He’d never really seen one in person, any music at the castle was often from performing musicians, but he had a basic idea of how they worked. It was softened around the edges, from rust or plant life growing over it he couldn’t tell in the gloom, but the lever turned when he twisted it experimentally.  
A short, blaring note bubbled out of the funnel, making him jump again. He wound it fully and was surprised again when it began to play. The song was old and warbled, either from time or the water, but the prince thought he recognised it. He turned to the mermaid, forgetting his annoyance momentarily, and was surprised to find the boy staring at the gramophone with wide eyes.  
_Can you hear?_ The prince asked, drifting a little closer and waving to his own ears.  
The mermaid pointed to the gramophone and then to himself, drawing a wiggly line out from his mouth with two fingers. _Sing_. He thought the gramophone was singing in the same way he did.  
_Music_, the prince explained. _To dance_.  
He’d made the sign once before, at the castle when he was trying to describe what happened at the dinner parties his parents held. He’d tried to explain, but short of standing in the middle of his room and dancing by himself the prince had not known how. And he certainly had not wanted to do that.  
_Dance?_ The mermaid copied the gesture with confusion in his eyes. He knew the motion, but not what it meant.  
The prince hesitated for just a beat before he reached out. He hadn’t had many dancing lessons, but he didn’t think it would matter, considering they were floating in water and his partner didn’t have legs. He placed one hand on the mermaid’s shoulder, and took his hand with the other. With nothing else to hold and little understanding of what was happening, the mermaid gripped onto the front of his shirt.  
It was a bit awkward and they couldn’t get far without a floor to push against, but the prince did his best to move them from side to side in time with the song. He twirled the mermaid around in the water, once, and they both lost their balance in the current, gripping onto each other’s hands to steady themselves. They were close, and stared at each other with wide eyes.  
The music cut off, the ship suddenly quiet again. The prince dropped the mermaid’s hands, remembering their fight and feeling shy again. They hung together in the water, neither boy feeling brave enough to look at the other.  
The mermaid reached out first. He put one hand on the prince’s wrist, lightly, and used his other hand to make a fist and draw a circle over his heart. _I’m sorry_.  
The prince pulled away quickly, and the mermaid looked up, worry in his expression, but it was just so he could use his hand to sign. _And me_.  
The mermaid pointed to a nearby window, the open ocean outside looking warm and inviting. _We can go?_  
_Wait_, the prince pulled him back, biting his lip before he confessed. _I did think the fish was a ghost_.  
The prince waited for the mermaid to react, and half expected annoyance.  
The mermaid laughed, in his strange, breathy way, and then the prince laughed. They held onto each other, and laughed, and when they stopped laughing the prince twisted the lever on the gramophone and they tried to dance again and laughed some more. The prince found he didn’t mind the shipwreck so much anymore; it felt warmer now and the shadows had lifted.  
And if there were any ghosts, they probably enjoyed the music and danced along, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again!!!! Sorry for my limited knowledge of BSL!!!!!! Please correct me if I made any mistakes!!!!!


	8. Chapter 8

They found him on the beach.   
His parents weren’t there but about a dozen of his father’s men were, storming out of the late evening fog that coated the beach and had chilled the prince while he waited.   
It had been dark outside the prince’s room when he’d left the castle, the sky all black except for the round disc of the moon cutting through, reflecting back from the ocean like a mirror. 

Inside, the castle had been quiet, almost eerily so. After a cancellation of a formal dinner—a welcome respite for the prince—the absence of festivities and servants running about left an air of emptiness and sleepiness in the halls. It had been days since the last time he had seen the mermaid and he had been quick to make his excuses that evening, claiming that he would use the time instead to study. Instead, he ran straight up to his room and packed a bag.  
There were always odd things he found around the castle—things he thought were completely normal, like spoons and socks, but the mermaid found great interest in. This time it was a silver mirror, since the mermaid had admitted he missed seeing the prince’s drawings of himself. He packed it now into the bag alongside a handful of jars and pouches in case he found anything worth collecting. His one regret about his trips into the sea was that he could not take his journal to record what he saw, and so he often liked to scoop up the odd creature or stone he found to take back and look at in his room. It made the nights where he and the mermaid were unable to meet more bearable.  
With the bag swung over his arm, he poked his head into the corridor to check if it was empty. The air of the castle had been still all around, and though it meant there was no one around to cross paths with, he felt every step on the creaking floorboards and was certain every squeaking door could be heard throughout the entire castle. He padded down carpeted floors and snuck past doorways with light spilling out from underneath them,though most were dark. The rooms were either empty or the occupants were already asleep in bed, and it reminded the prince of his childhood when he used to wake earlier than others in the castle and spend hours exploring the empty floors.   
The fog hadn’t begun to gather until he’d slipped out to the castle gardens where the night air was cool. He’d crept, slowly, from the kitchen gardens and along a side path that ran along the outer castle wall, where the ocean shone through gaps between the stones building up the wall. It was always more vibrant at night and he felt the pull of it, letting it drag him down, through a gap in the wall and down a cliff path.  
He’d been cloaked in fog by the time he’d reached the beach, dampness sinking into his hair. Just as he was about to rush into the water towards a familiar flash of teal, he was dragged to a stop.   
The gloved hand clamped onto his arm sent icy dread thundering through his body. From his wrist to the bottom of his stomach to the top of his head he felt fear, foreboding and alarm spreading through him like he was being petrified to solid rock right there. Time seemed to slow as he turned to face the man who had captured him. A member of his father’s personal guard, who looked thunderously angry with him.

Outside of his room rain poured down and, with not much better to do with his time and worries, the prince paced. They had left him there, after dragging him up the cliff, all but throwing him into his room and locking the door, before rushing off to report to his parents.   
The castle was no longer silent. Through the floorboards, he could hear servants running around, calls of confusion and orders, the general sounds of a castle that had been woken up at midnight. He’d tried to stop and listen to what was going on, but the sounds were muffled together by the time they reached him through the floorboards, and he was far too restless to sit in one place. So, he paced.  
There was a feeling of gnawing at the bottom of his stomach, the feeling that something was wrong—worse than what he already knew. The castle had been asleep when he’d left, and no one had seen him go. He’d even locked his bedroom door. There should have been no way of knowing he was gone—unless someone already had an indication.   
A sudden knocking at his door made him jump even though he’d been anticipating it. He knew it was his mother even though she didn’t speak. Where the castle staff always waited patiently for the room’s occupant to permit their entrance, his mother always declared her presence by storming in through the door as soon as her fist had left the wood. His father followed her stride.  
His mother had fallen into hysterics. They had found him on the beach, with a bag packed and had assumed he was meeting someone to run away. She screeched and screamed and demanded answers that he could not give her. Ever suspicious of the neighbouring countries, she assumed that he was being lured away by another kingdom with the intent of an assassination or kidnapping. Or worse, a marriage.  
She’d suddenly cut off and sat, exhausted. The prince had waited in tense silence, even his father not daring to say anything as the seconds dragged on. She’d stood, her cape following the motion, one hand gripping onto his bedpost.  
_You will never leave this castle again_, was all that she said.   
She then turned, her cloak billowing out around her as she stalked out of the door. His father, looking as stumped by her exit as the prince felt, followed after her a beat later. The prince remained, frozen in the centre of the room as the door slammed shut behind the pair. The sound of the lock clicking into place was the only sound he heard for the rest of the night.

The rough pounding at the door woke him at last in the early hours of the morning. Though he’d barely slept, he launched himself up. It was his servant, with a bowl of slop from the kitchen. He began eating it as soon as it was placed in front of him, before he could even recognise what it was that he was eating. He had been given no dinner last night, and was too hungry to care what they were feeding him.   
The man stayed until he was finished eating, all but scraping the sides of the bowl with his spoon, strangely silent through the meeting. The prince held onto the bowl when the servant reached to take it, forcing the man to look at him.  
“You are strangely silent for one who must be gloating.”  
The man considered his words for a moment. “We have been told we mustn’t speak with you.”  
“You told them,” the prince accused. The man did not deny it.  
“I told them where you would be, and nothing more. You do not see it now, but it was for your safety. You do not understand what manner of creature you were involved with.”  
“You do not understand what you have done,” the prince countered, anger flashing in his eyes.  
“They will not keep you in here forever,” the man said. It sounded like he was attempting to convince himself. “Just for as long as it will take.”  
“As long as what will take?” the boy asked.  
“As long as it will take for you to see sense, or bend to them. Whichever is first.”

They let him out of his room after three days. A calmer child might have been able to cope with it, but for a boy as active and curious as he, it was complete torture to be stuck in one room all day with nothing to do but stare out of the window at the rain.  
His room, hung right above the straight drop of the cliffs, had a fantastic view of the ocean. One he’d always loved—but it was both a taunt and a temptation now. There was no way he could have escaped from his window, no matter how many different plans he tried to conjure up in his head. The castle had only one tower that hung out far enough over the ocean that the rocks where the cliffs met the sea weren’t directly below. He remembered times, as a young child, when he would climb the tower to lean out over the edge as far as he possibly could and think about how fun it might be to let go and dive into the ocean. He’d grown out of the thought soon enough, but by day three it was tempting again.   
But, finally, they’d let him out. He’d thought that he was being taken down to the courtroom for an official warning, but was instead brought to the library. He had a lesson. It was Latin, but he’d been so starved for entertainment over the last few days that he relished the chance to be anywhere else but his room and doing something, even if that thing was translation of ancient religious texts.  
Returning to his room had filled him with repulsion, but he had hope now. If they wanted him attending his lessons again it meant they were returning him to his routine, and that meant that it was only so long before their anger was forgotten again and he could sneak away to the sea once more.  
He spent the evening daydreaming ways that he could get a note to his friend to wait for him, how he could perhaps drop a message in a bottle out of his window without it smashing, and what he could possibly put down onto paper that the mermaid would understand. He went to bed with a much lighter heart than he had in days.  
He woke early and dressed, waiting for the day’s lesson. When they did not come for him at the same time as they had the morning before, he sat by the window and gazed out to the sea, fancying that the raindrops that still fell from the sky were mermaids and fish jumping in and out of the waves crashing below. He sat, and waited, and watched the sun crawl across the sky. It wasn’t until the sun had passed its halfway point and he noticed that no food had been brought to him since yesterday’s breakfast that he realised what was happening.   
They weren’t going to let him out.   
They wanted him under their control. He had gone too far, and now they would keep him in his room for as long as they liked and take him out when they pleased, only for what they wanted. He was a doll in a dollhouse that had come to life and insisted it could run around freely like any other child. No matter how hard he had pushed, they had always had the power to control everything he did, and now that he had forced their hand, they would. He might never leave his room again if they wished it, let alone the castle.  
He would never see the mermaid again.

He had to wait longer still for his servant to be the one to bring him his meal again and by that time he was about ready to try pounding down the wooden door to his room. His visits had been few and awkward, with the prince refusing to speak to him and the man looking like he was arguing with himself internally. Even so, it was a slight improvement from the other servants he did not know who sometimes brought food to him. Sometimes they did not appear at all.  
But finally, the man’s hefty knock was the one at the door.   
“Take me to the beach,” he demanded, before the man had even shut the door. “You have ruined the only happiness I have ever had, and now you will help me. If I am never going to leave this castle again, I have to at least have the chance to say goodbye.” He did not need to explain who he was talking about.  
He had been ready to beg, to scream and throw tantrums and maybe even cry, but it hadn’t been necessary. The man had pursed his lips like he was about to argue when the prince held up his necklace to demand that the man return it for him at least, if he would not help, but the man had interrupted him. “Where did you get this?”  
“He gave it to me,” surprised, the prince answered honestly.  
The man stared at the shell momentarily, an unreadable expression on his face. Then, he nodded once and finally spoke. “I will help you. You will not have long, but I will help you.”

He barely had time to consider it. Barely had time to think of the dreadful thought that the mermaid might not appear, that he would have to turn away and return to an empty life without even a goodbye—before he was scrambling his way down the cliffs, tripping and scrapping the toes of his boots as he ran. The sky hung heavy with clouds, like it had on the day they met. But rather than the light mist that had left his hair damp, today water fell in droplets down from the sky and blinded him as he ran.  
He clattered down to the pier, banging his knee as he knelt and anxious that the time was slipping away from him. It would take longer to return to the castle, and he did not know when the mermaid would respond to his call. It would not be worth returning to the castle after his servant was able to cover for him.  
He pulled the necklace from around his neck and held it to his lips. With his eyes closed he played a short tune, and could hear his anxieties in the sound it made. He only had to wait a few moments before his friend appeared, splashing up through the water.   
The sight of the mermaid that was automatically a relief to the prince felt painful. The familiarity of him, along with the bright smile as the mermaid pulled himself up onto the pier to greet him brought a swell of joy to his chest that quickly burst into aching as he remembered what he was here to do. The prince did not—could not—return his smile. The mermaid reached out to the prince to grip onto his hands, sensing his worries, and the act was as painful as it was comforting.   
He took a long look at his friend. Committing the exact, water-like sheen of his teal hair to memory, the pearly white of his skin, even the curious expression on his face as the mermaid tilted his head with concern. His eyes were wide, his mouth pulled into a frown, but there was still a spark of amusement behind it, as though he was expecting to hear some long and humorous tale explaining why the prince had been gone for so long. Water droplets glittered on the boy’s tail like gems. The prince dropped his eyes to the pier. If he looked at the creature for too long he wouldn’t be able to do it.  
It was simple really, but his hands shook as he reached out. The mermaid took the necklace from him and glanced down at it briefly before looking back up at the prince, trying to ask if something was wrong with it. The prince took a deep breath, made sure that he wouldn’t cry, and made his last sign.  
_Goodbye. _  
The prince left. He refused to turn back, knowing that if he did he would be frozen in place and would never return. He didn’t see the mermaid, trapped by the edge of the water, reaching out for him as he left.


	9. Chapter 9

He’d met the girl at a ball two years later. It was organised by his parents to celebrate his birthday, though after an evening of smiling placidly at everyone his parents introduced him to, and biting his tongue every time someone made a comment about how much he looked like his father, he didn’t feel particularly celebrated. He hadn’t really known what to do with himself all evening; he still wasn’t used to attending balls that he wasn’t planning on leaving as quickly as possible. He’d tried to hide behind a pair of voluminous display curtains draped decoratively behind the thrones, but his mother had spotted his feet poking out from underneath the edge and had chased him back out.  
His crown felt heavy on his head and was beginning to give him a headache. It didn’t seem to matter how often his parents insisted that he wear it—its tight metallic bands did not become any more comfortable. His head ached, his feet ached, and he was tired. But that, at least, was nothing new.  
As slowly as they had started, the years had begun to slip past. He had grown used to the routine of it, from his wake up call in the morning, to the extra lessons he was now expected to attend in the library, to the uproar in court— arguments he was bound to listen to but never had the energy to engage with. He was always busy, and yet time had never passed so slowly. But it was far easier, having to think of coastlines and the political conversations of history, than the ache in his heart and the future that chained him to the inside of the castle.   
He was fine, for the most part, as long as he didn’t stop. Which made the nights so much harder.  
It hadn’t been the first night, or the second, after he’d returned from the beach, but some time after that he had heard it. He’d sat up, bolt upright, and rushed out to the window, convinced he’d heard some far off creature singing. Leaning out of the window, fingers gripping at the ledge, he strained his ears. Nothing. There was nothing but the whispering waves. He’d waited until the night air began to make him shiver and returned to the bed. He’d just begun to drift away when he heard it again.  
It seemed to only play right at the point of exhaustion, right when he was about to drop into sleep, pulling his mind back into consciousness no matter how hard he fought against it. He did not want to be awake, to have the time to lay in bed and think. He did not want to have to listen to the songs of the sea and know that he could never return to it.   
He tried his best to ignore it, knowing that it was useless to think about it, but every time his eyes began to fall shut he would hear it again. He was never sure whether he was hearing a real song or whether it was his mind playing a trick on him—giving him what he wanted when he knew it could never really be there.   
He caught sight of himself in a window pane and was, as he often was these days, shocked by how little he recognised himself. His skin stood out against the dark sky behind the window and he trailed towards it, away from the bubbling voices of the room behind him until he could see himself clearly.  
His black curls were shorter and his face thinner. He knew he was taller now from how small the castle felt to him, and the freckles that had littered his skin during his childhood had faded away a little with all the time he spent inside the castle. His skin looked sallow and pale whenever he caught his eye in the mirror, the dark stains under his eyes not doing much to help either.   
He looked past his reflection, out to the sky beyond. This side of the castle faced away from the ocean, and it was too dark to tell what was land and what was sky. The view was black, and empty, seeming to stretch, vast, before him. The voices of the room behind called him to move away, to join them in their lights and joy, all propriety and glamour, but he felt separate from it. He stayed frozen at the window, eyes searching the inky black, unable to move away until he had found what he was looking for—what he was always looking for.  
The slender hand that gripped onto his shoulder made him start, though he’d promised himself that he would be better than that now, and he came crashing back into the colours and noises of the ballroom again. It was his mother, smiling one of her unconvincing smiles and guiding him away from the window and back into the golden brightness of the room.  
She led him through crowds of strangers that were too intense for his eyes to focus on after staring at the dark for so long, to the throne where he could see the sharp profile of his father waiting. There was someone with him—the girl.  
She was presented with a flourish, as though she were an expensive gift of material or food, his parents buzzing with anticipation as they introduced her. She curtsied and he found himself having to take her hand and bow. He had no idea who she was or what he should say to her, but that turned out to not be a problem as his parents were determined to fill the space with their own chatter, referring to her as though they had known her all their lives. The rest of the night centred around her. They were told that they must dance together and sit by one another to eat while the adults watched on, smiling to each other knowingly and making comments to him that he didn’t understand. She smiled shyly and spoke almost as little as he did, gazing up at him from under her eyelashes when he wasn’t paying attention.  
And suddenly she was part of the routine. She was always at meals and they were often sent out for walks around the garden together. They hardly spoke, hardly did much beyond smiling politely at each other, but he found her presence a quiet comfort in some way. She, at least, did not expect anything of him. He did not mind her company, though he found the patronising looks the servants would give whenever he was with her, along with his parents’ pandering about how happy they were for him, annoying and even strange at times. No one ever picked up on or responded to the confused frowns he pulled when they said these things.   
The only time he spent by himself now was at night, alone in his room and lying awake trying to decipher the sounds sent to him by the waves, picking apart the whispers of the sea and convinced he could hear music playing under it’s lull. He could do nothing about it—he could neither convince himself that it was real or fake, nor go to it to discover the answer—and so he chose to ignore it and hope that it would disappear again and leave him to the job of pretending he was the son his parents had always wished for. It had been years since that day, and in all that time he put as much energy as he could into not even looking at the ocean. It came as a shock when he discovered he was to spend two weeks crossing it.   
He was unsure when it had been agreed, but suddenly it was of utmost importance that they all meet the girl’s parents and visit her kingdom. A journey had been planned, a ship was to be prepared for their voyage across the sea, and the girl was almost buzzing with excitement to return to her home country. The prince was certain that his parents were planning something that they felt was best he didn’t know about, but he went through the motions of what they wanted from him without much thought as to what it might be. Even if he’d had the energy to think it through, he knew he would not like the outcome that he came up with.  
The weather had been sickeningly humid on the day they had boarded, thick clouds coating the sky and refusing to give way to the insisting warmth of summer. The heat had made the prince petulant and unhelpfully childlike. He’d sat waiting in the shade of their luggage, tired from a restless night—the heat, and thoughts that he might not hear the beautiful, haunting music again for several weeks having kept him up hours longer than he was used to even now—as the ship’s crew had rushed about on deck. He’d been sent below by his mother before long, her sea sickness leaving her with a shorter temper than usual. He was glad for the respite from the heat and noise.  
He was in a cabin on his own, a tiny wooden thing with a single bed and just enough space for his trunk, that looked plain and sparse when he compared it to his overly decorated rooms at the castle. He wondered if he would sleep here, far away in foreign waters, where surely even the music of his imagination couldn’t be fooled into following him.   
All he had for distractions from his own thoughts were his parents’ company and a handful of books. Favouring the latter, he curled into the corner of the thin bed and didn’t notice when the ship left shore. He ate in silence with the girl in his parents’ room, a rather larger space than the small boxes he and the girl had been given. It reminded him of another room in another ship long ago where he had danced to strange underwater music and found that the heat of the day had left him with a headache. He excused himself as soon as was polite and returned to the solitude of his cabin. He had not expected for sleep to come to him as he climbed into the bed, but somehow the gentle rhythm of the boat rocked him peacefully into drifting away for the first time in months, if not years.  
Noises of crashing woke the prince a mere handful of hours later, and his tired body felt it keenly. At first the frustration of waking when he’d slept so peacefully for once was all he could think of, to the point that he missed the first few strikes of lightning cracking through the sky. The humid day had given way to a storm further out on the sea, and the ship was being thrown about mercilessly with it.  
He could hear thunderously loud rain drops hitting against the deck, in time with the crew running about, doing all they could to fight the storm. The prince closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the sound of rain falling, knowing there was nothing he could do to help and resolved that the best thing he could do was slip back into sleep and wait out the rest of the storm.  
With his eyes clenched shut, he tried desperately to not think of another dark night on another ship, where he had felt trapped and cold and alone. A ship that the sea had claimed because a mermaid had fallen in love with a human, that the ghosts of sailors were still said to haunt.  
It was then that the music started, brief flashes of it in between each crashing wave. It was faint, but at the first note of it he shot up in his cabin bed, adrenaline running through his body.   
It was clearer than he’d ever heard it, and utterly familiar.  
He rose in the tangle of sheets strewn across his bed and strained his ears to hear it under the rain and thunder and stomping footsteps above. He wasn’t even entirely convinced that it was truly there, but every time he gave up on it another burst of a song seemed to play under the crash of a wave against the side of the ship. Had there been a window in his cabin he would have thrown it open, wind and rain be damned, but there wasn’t and his fingers clutched at the sheets anxiously. Whatever was singing—if it were real—must be out in the storm.  
Without thinking, he stood. The ship swung violently from side to side and it was slow progress to cross the short distance from his bed to the door, but he hardly noticed it. He was so absorbed in listening it was like he was in a bubble, separate from the rest of the ship. He floated through the corridors, almost trance-like, heart pounding in his head along with the rain and stuttering whenever the music came to him.  
Emerging on deck, he was aware of nothing but the flashes of singing that he could hear clearly now. He ignored the cold of the wind, ignored the slippery floors of the deck, ignored the shouts and cries of the crew that noticed their prince wandering out aimlessly. He rushed to the side of the boat and gripped at the edge, eyes squinted against water that might have been from above or below the ship as he searched through the gloom. He felt someone tugging at him, shouting in his ear, but he pulled away. He was so close—he could hear the song, and it was calling him. He realised that now that he could hear it, it was calling him and telling him to come to the water—and he would if only he could find a way off of this boat.  
The ship surged. A sudden swell of waves or wind, the prince didn’t know, all he knew was that he had lost grip of the boat and was tumbling down. His stomach dropped out of his body and the water was rushing up fast and the spell that the mermaid had cast upon him shattered. The sea reached up to pull him under, icy cold. It was the clearest his head had felt since he had returned the necklace.

The sound of gulls woke him. He opened his eyes slowly, and squinted up at the clear sky. He was shadowed under the edge of a cliff, but could see birds circling far up in a strip of blue that was bright enough to sting his bleary eyes.   
He was stiff and sore, and as he felt around about himself he realised he seemed to have spent the night on something solid and unforgiving that had left his body with even more to complain about than the storm.   
The storm. He sat up, looking around himself, but there were no signs of last night’s downpour, unless you counted his battered and bruised body. There was no sign of the boat, no washed-up detritus or driftwood, his parents, the girl, and even the crew were nowhere to be seen. Unbelievably, he was back at the castle, the short pier that he hadn't visited in two years being the uncomfortable bed he had spent the night on. He had no memory of getting there, nothing but blackness after the strange, dreamlike memory of crossing the deck last night and falling, down, to the outstretched arms of the ocean.   
There was movement as he looked around at the now calm waters and he caught a glimpse of soft eyes watching him at the edge of the pier, widening suddenly as they were spotted and jumping down into the water to hide.   
The prince scrambled forward along the pier, gripping at the edge and catching sight of his rescuer. The boy looked up almost guiltily, trying to stay hidden behind a beam of the pier with only his eyes peeking up from under his hair. The prince didn’t even think. Forgetting the aches and injuries of his body, he slipped down into the water, closer to the mermaid that had once been his friend. He reached out to the boy, still hiding, eyes downcast, and hair fanning out. Just as he was about to grip the mermaid’s shoulder, his disbelief seemed to convince convincing the prince that the mermaid wasn’t really there, and the boy shifted away, pulling himself under the pier.  
_Wait_—he struggled to pull together what signs he remembered, frustrated now at the lack of practise. He hadn't thought he would ever need them again. The other boy clutched at the pier and looked down at the water from underneath his hair. It had grown longer, like the prince’s had, but he hadn’t done anything to shorten it. He was avoiding the prince’s gaze with his shoulders raised defensively and, keeping one hand on the pier, the prince gradually tried to bring himself closer to the boy.   
_Please_.  
The mermaid looked up, seeming to recognise the gesture, and they locked eyes then, and though the mermaid tried to keep a distance between the two of them, the prince noticed that he couldn’t quite seem to bring himself to leave. He moved his free hand out like he had done years ago when they first met, and the mermaid watched the motion with an unreadable look on his face.  
This close to the water, the prince could smell the once familiar tang of sea salt, as well as the damp wood of the pier, and kept as still as the swaying waves would let him. Doubtfully, slowly, the mermaid lifted a dripping hand from the water and brushed his fingers against the prince’s palm. Under the pier, shadows and reflected light played strangely in time with the lapping water surrounding them, and the prince felt calmer and more at peace than he had in years. It was as though the pair were hidden away from the rest of the world, hidden in some safe cocoon where no one could find them. But it felt like more than that—it felt like relief.   
Dappled shadows flickered across the prince’s skin where their hands were linked, traveled along the mermaid’s arm, over his pale face. He finally looked up at the prince, still hiding shy under his hair, and the prince’s chest tightened at the sadness in his eyes. He looked… lonely. As though he had missed the prince as much as the prince had missed him. Something in his expression, something in that tentative hopefulness, made the prince move forward without really even thinking about what he was doing.  
The prince kissed the mermaid, and for just a second the prince felt as though he belonged somewhere again.  
And then the mermaid froze. His body tense, he pushed the prince away. He just had time to catch the look on the mermaid’s face as he floundered in the water, before the other boy had turned, diving away into the sea with a rush of water.  
It wasn’t the shock of seeing the mermaid that haunted the prince as he dragged himself back onto the pier and looked out to the now empty sea, hopelessly searching for the flick of a tail or a flash of bright teal hair, or upset at being pushed away and left behind. It was the look on the mermaid’s face as he’d left.  
He hadn’t looked angry, or confused. He had looked hurt.


	10. Chapter 10

His return to the castle had been received not unlike a ghost turning up at the door would have been. The maid that had opened the door to him had frozen, eyes wide and hand over her mouth, before rushing off immediately— leaving the prince shivering in the doorway. Apparently, as he found out later, word of his fall had been sent back to the castle and he had been assumed lost to the sea.   
An enormous fuss was made of him then, so many servants and court members swarming around him and bundling him up in blankets and feeding him soup that he hadn’t known what to do with himself. The attention wasn’t unwelcome— until it became burdensome. He slept by the fire for nearly a whole day, and had no memory of being moved to his bed until he woke there. He had gained much sympathy for his night spent lost at sea, though he’d refused to explain by what manner he had managed to reach the castle, and none of the castle staff made any effort to move him from his bed.  
He was not actually in any way injured or sick, and probably would have been strong enough to even leave his room had he wanted to, but whenever he woke he was so lost to feelings of helplessness and confusion that it was easier to lie in bed until sleep came again. He slept so heavily that he could not hear the ocean’s music, whether it had been singing to him or not. And then his mother was there.  
The prince allowed himself to be swept up in her rush of worries and fuss, a welcome distraction from the tumultuous thoughts that he had been lost in for the past days. It was the affection that startled him the most, she held him like he was a small boy and cried gently into his hair before she could even speak to him.  
She begged him to not waste any more time, that the thought of his death had brought her fears of losing her only son to light, had made her realise the loneliness of a life without an heir to carry on their family line. Exhaustion had taken over the prince at this point, the warm fire and soft blankets enough to make him drowsy, and he found himself agreeing with her, if just in hope that she would go away and be quiet if he did.  
Where she had returned to the kingdom to reach her son, his father had continued the journey to ensure that the girl would return home safely and could, upon being informed of the prince’s safety, be instructed to begin talks of an alliance with the girl’s kingdom. All it would take was the prince’s agreement and a signature. Perhaps a quick ceremony to make everything official.  
Something in the lullaby tone of her voice kept him hanging on despite his heavy eyelids. She spoke to him of a family, of union and strength, and of running the castle as a king. She painted him a picture of children, a king and a queen, a bright and bustling castle, never empty and never still. He was despondent, and hopeless, and just lonely enough to agree.  
The next time he woke, a date had been set for the wedding.

He was never alone in those days. As soon as he was strong enough to step outside of his bedroom door everything became a flurry of colours and materials, cakes and drinks to try, clothes and shoes to be fit. Everything was either too soft or too dry or too bright or not bright enough. He had been surrounded by servants and tailors, chefs and florists, all asking him questions and wanting to know which was best until he couldn’t really remember why it was he had to pick out these things anymore, or what they were for. It was like his parents didn’t want him to have the chance to think, to consider what was going on around him. He didn’t mind. Even if he’d been given the chance, he wouldn’t have tried to stop it. He was just too tired, and it was far easier to think about which flowers smelt the best than it was to worry about a look a friend had left him with.  
The inside of his head felt like a cloud had filled it up, like there was a thin layer between himself and the rest of the world, and he was just watching everything that was happening around him unfold. It was just easier not to think.  
The girl was there, often, demurely considering the same questions as he did and asking what he would like best half the time. Or what his mother would prefer, if she was in the vicinity. She was clever like that, it seemed.   
There was nothing wrong with her, per se. She was polite, and smiled often. She liked to read books and he liked to read books. He imagined that was about the amount of thought his parents had put into the match. He supposed he could have been grateful for that. She never really spoke to him, but that wasn’t her fault. He never really spoke to her. He was just too tired to think of any conversation, and even if he wasn’t, their conversations normally lasted about as long as it took for one to ask a question, and the other to answer it. He couldn’t dislike her. In a way, she was just like him—she was just trying to be what his parents wanted her to be.   
But there wasn’t anything about her that he really _liked_ all that much either. Perhaps if he’d been the child his parents wanted, if he’d gone to his lessons when they asked and behaved and smiled when they wanted him to. If he’d never gone down to the beach on a misty day and made a friend. If he’d never been shown how incredible and vibrant and _interesting_ the world could be, perhaps then he would have been someone who could have met this girl happily and been content with the idea of marrying her.  
The thought that this would be his life, his everyday now, began to niggle in the back of his head. It was what he thought about at dinner, when he did not speak to anyone, and at night when he could not sleep. Picking out flowers and smiling politely and ruling a kingdom he still had no interest in, even now that he was attending lessons and speaking with his subjects every day. He’d thought the interest would grow with age and maturity, but it had not. He was simply forcing himself to go through the motions, and now he would force himself through the motions of a wedding.   
When they slept in the same bed perhaps he could ask her if she heard the music, too.  
It had grown louder since the storm, singing a song that made his heart bleed with loneliness, but the prince was determined to ignore it. He was certain now that it must just be his imagination playing tricks on him. It meant nothing at all, just that he had to lie awake later and later every night, and become more and more tired and disconnected with his surroundings each day.  
And then it was the day before.  
It was particularly hectic. If he cared anymore he would have been irritated that so much had been left to the last minute. He was, as he always was now, woken early and rushed around with his mother and a group of her ladies-in-waiting for the morning. They simpered with tears in their eyes and called him handsome and did not notice when he did not look up from the floor.   
They had moved out to the patio, a pale white mezzanine set to one side of the castle with a clear view of the ocean, where everything was to take place the following day. There were rows and rows of tables and chairs, and servants were everywhere, moving furniture and piling outfits and hanging flowers anywhere there was space. He trailed after the group, head down and dimly aware that he was agreeing to something his mother insisted on, when a shadow blocked his path and the prince looked up to someone he hadn’t spoken to in years. His eyes widened and instinctively the prince moved away, still unable to face the man that had betrayed him. His servant was still quick, and strong, and had been expecting the prince to move and caught him before he could get away.  
“You need to hear this,” he insisted, still grave as ever. The prince could not imagine any single thing the man could say that he would want to hear and twisted his arm out of the man’s grip.  
“The music that you hear,” he called out to him as he retreated and they were the only words that could have possibly stopped the prince. “I have heard it before.”  
He did not look back. He refused to face the man, but he could not make himself walk away.  
“Only one thing makes them sing like that,” he still wouldn’t say the name, not even after all this time and everything that had happened. “I have heard those creatures sing for pain and joy and I have heard the songs that lure sailors from their ships.”  
The prince almost rolled his eyes and found himself incredulous that the man had managed to summon a feeling beyond apathy within the prince. After everything he’d been through, after everything the man had done and not done, here he was again with all of his old warnings and superstitions. It was enough to give the prince the energy he needed to storm off, but the man was in front of him before he could. He leaned in and spoke in a hushed voice that no one else would be able to hear.   
“Mermaids only sing like that when their hearts are broken.”  
A blink later and the prince realised he had been left alone. He had not noticed the man leaving. He looked to where the man had stood, where rushing servants and fussing court members still roamed and prepared everything, but he wasn’t looking at any of that. He didn’t look at the tables or the flowers or the people fussing around him.  
He was looking at the ocean.

It would be the last night he would spend in this bed—in this room. A suite lower down in the castle had been cleared out for the couple to move into, and this room would stand empty until there were guests to make use of it. There had been no questions to the prince of what items he might want to bring from his old room to the new one. He assumed everything would be thrown away.  
Lying awake that night, as he had for so many nights now, he waited for the music.   
It would be the last time he heard it, and so he was anxious for it to begin. Determined to ignore it for so long, he hadn’t ever noticed if there was a particular time that it began or ended but now that he was listening for it he was certain that it was late. He feared that tonight would be the night he would finally sleep and miss it, or that he would lay awake all night and it would never come. The look in his friend’s eyes the last time they had met kept spilling across his eyelids, in time with his servant’s words repeating themselves over and over in the back of his head. With every second that the music didn’t begin, the weight of his heart seemed to grow more and more, sinking deep into the depths of his chest like it was slowly turning to stone.   
Perhaps if he had been a boy who attended his lessons happily, and had fallen in love with a girl who liked to read instead of a mermaid that brought him shells and spoke with his hands. Perhaps then it would have been a happy day for him. Perhaps then he would have been lying awake the night before with anticipation for the day, instead of anticipation for a song.  
The image came to him then, of tomorrow. Of the outfits and the roses and a girl walking down an aisle. Of standing, waiting for her, alone. The image of being completely surrounded by people celebrating him and his parents watching him with pride, and still being so completely alone.  
The music did not come. He stood simply because he did not want to be here anymore.   
He did not take anything from his room, because he would not need it where he was going. He did not spare his surroundings a glance, he took no more time than was needed to leave his crown on top of his now made bed.   
He had expected someone to stop him as he left his room, but all he found was a littering of guards along the hall outside of his bedroom door. There had been a celebratory dinner at the castle and the guards had spent it drinking heavily. The prince was able to slip by silently. There was not so much as a twitch or sigh as he passed, like he was not really there at all.  
He padded along the silent corridors quietly, separate from the noises of life and celebration that still lingered in the castle. Lights were left on in empty rooms and guests slept strewn over decorative furniture in the halls. He wandered the castle like a ghost, and did not cross paths with a single soul that was awake.   
He had one last stop to make that night. He knocked before he entered the room, though he knew the man would not wake. He considered rousing the man to say goodbye, perhaps to apologise, but knew that he would not be able to carry out what he had decided if he did. Instead, he left his journal with the man, placed neatly at the end of his bed. It was the best place for the book now that his room would be left empty.  
Closing the door behind himself, he began to climb the castle’s tower. The spiraling stairs made him dizzy but he kept his gaze focused on the stairs in front of him, ignoring the flashes of green sea in the corner of his eye every time he passed a window.  
The wind hit him as soon as he reached the top like it was trying to hold him back, and he had to push to reach the walled edge and pull himself up. Once he had regained his balance he stood straight and spread his arms, eyes closed and thoughts clear for once. The wind was sharp enough to cut through his clothes and air rushed in his ears, but he could swear that he heard the song and smiled faintly to himself. Whether it was real or not, whatever it meant, he wanted it to be the last thing that he heard.  
And then, he fell.  
The black sky swallowed him up and rushing air froze his fingers, then his hands, and then his arms. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and he felt genuine fear despite his resolve that this was what he wanted. He closed his eyes and tried to remember to breathe.   
His body crashed into a swarm of freezing bubbles, quick to numb with the cold water that surrounded him. Impossible to fight against it as his movements slowed, he had no idea which way the surface might have been anymore. He did not care. He squeezed his eyes tight against the darkness of the sea, not wanting to see that he was alone still.  
Icy cold arms slipped around his chest, squeezing his already tight lungs, a tight band wrapping around his neck as he fought to keep in his last breath. As he gasped, his eyes flew open. They were met with teal.


	11. Chapter 11

Epilogue  
The man wandered the beach in the approaching gloom.  
It felt later than it was due to the time of year, and it was beginning to rain. He kept away from the water’s edge, too cold already to risk wet feet. He was tall; he hulked over most men he came across—and those he didn’t rarely had his bulk to rely on. In a previous life he’d worked in a castle, but that felt like too long ago to remember now. The memories were stained with sorrow, and avoiding thinking of that time had pushed them far away from the present day in his mind.   
Years before that he had lived a life at sea, and he knew from those days that the swirling clouds above meant that the light rainfall and gentle breeze were soon going to grow into something far stronger. He had only just returned to this kingdom and with no where to stay he was searching for shelter.  
Dark, jagged rocks rose up from the ocean, not dissimilar to where his old place of work had stood. He knew the rocks of this bay well, famous for their black sheen and how they shadowed the white sands and teal oceans in summer. Nobody ever mentioned how soulless they made the dull landscape appear in winter, veins of black blood cutting through grey clouds for months at a time.  
Here those same rocks stretched out. He knew that if he looked closely enough, he would find a dark cave or two hidden into the creases of the rock that would be safe enough to pass the night in. It was hard to judge with the storm picking up, but he didn’t think the sand here was quite as pale as the beach he was used to. It reached out into the bay, white against the darkening water, as though stretching out towards the sea itself. The man’s sailor heart ached. He could feel his own chest reach out, yearning for the water, and turned himself away from its rushing tide. It had been years since he’d left dry land.  
A flash of light caught his eye as he’d looked out to the sea. At the end of the bay the rocks piled upwards, building and twisting into a towering lighthouse that tipped the end of the bay. It had stood tall for longer than the man had been alive, slowly bending and crumbling towards the ground as each year passed and each storm sent another flurry of waves to paw at it. It had been disused for nearly as long—when the man had been a boy in school, he and his friends used to tease each other into seeing how far they were brave enough to climb it. There had been talk of ghosts and parents chastised any children caught venturing too close.   
But there were lights now, and there had been for a fair few years. The man didn’t know who had taken over business there; no one new had come to work between the cliffs that held the bay together. In somewhere as small as the sea-locked town bordered by the cliffs of where he used to work, everyone’s business was known, and strangers were soon heard of by all who lived there.  
He headed towards it. A night with a stranger would be a better night than a night with a cave.  
The lighthouse towered over an outcrop cut harshly into the sand below, hanging over a soft alcove—almost a cave, really. A small, wooden boat was pushed right up into the alcove, as far as it would go and tied down to protect it from the gradually swelling tide.   
The rain began to pour down, and the man rushed up towards the door of the building, thinking not of ghosts but of an old retired sailor that would be filled with stories of the sea and advice that the man would forget about until it was too late. Perhaps he would even have a drink for the man, and food.  
As the rain blinded him and the wind began to rise and whip around, he pushed through the door without knocking, certain that he would be able to explain himself as soon as he came face to face with the lighthouse keeper.  
Inside was warm, and the walls seemed to protect from the elements far better than they had looked like they would from the outside. There were long shelves running along the round walls, filled with books and shells and plants. There was even a clear, glass bowl that held a few fish darting about contentedly. Amongst the piles of books—a strange collection, obviously picked up over several years whenever the owner had the opportunity—was the odd notebook, and on a table by the fire lay an open book filled with sketches and illustrations of similar objects to those that ran around the room. It was an odd, eclectic style of decor. The room was almost overflowing with trinkets and trophies, all from the sea or nearby land, and the shelves spilled over onto tables and chairs. Even the plants tumbled, overgrown, out of their pots. It reminded the man of a room he’d been in before, a room that he used to clean and serve and deliver food to, but that was too long ago to remember now—  
“Who is that?” a voice called down from the stairs above. It sounded rough, like it wasn’t used often. “You are not who I was expecting.”  
The voice started down the stairs but then stopped short at the sight of the person who had entered his home. The man imagined his own reaction was not dissimilar.  
It was a trap. A trick. He was seeing a ghost. Of course the lighthouse wasn’t renewed and filled with light and warmth, he was just seeing things. He had wandered into the path of an ancient sea witch, or the lighthouse really was haunted, and whoever this evil presence was had set up a vision to haunt him.  
A prince stood on the stairs, gawking down at the man just as much as the man imagined he was gawking back. But that was not possible. Everyone in the kingdom knew what had happened to that boy, what he had done. The whole kingdom had mourned, and sent well wishes to the family, and spoke of what a shame it had been. The man was one of the few that lay awake at night and wondered about all of the things that could have been done differently.   
The man had never married, never settled down long enough for a family to begin. This boy had been the closest thing he had ever known of having a son, and he had let the boy down. This vision, this cruel recreation of his past was a punishment.  
The prince recovered first, and continued down the stairs.   
“What are you doing here?” he said, as though he wasn’t the walking ghost.   
Still rude. Still as abrupt and impertinent as ever.  
“You aren’t real,” was all the man would respond. The prince grinned and it was a cruel trick because the man’s heart ached to see that bold smile alive again when he knew it couldn’t be real.  
“Alright. But what are you doing here?”  
He did look older. The last time he’d seen the boy he’d barely been level with his shoulders, but now he had almost caught up with the man’s height, staring cockily across as though daring the man to say he wasn’t real again. His face was thinner and his hair longer, more unruly if possible, than when he’d last seen him. It looked like he cut it himself. The boy’s eyes looked harder, but not unkind.  
The man supposed he wasn’t a boy anymore. “I needed a place to wait out the storm.”  
“You’d better sit down. I suppose if you have decided that this is a haunting I may as well make you a cup of tea.”  
The man found he was annoyed that the boy—the ghost—had read his thoughts so well. Irritation came back to him like a habit.  
With naught else to do and rain still pouring outside, the man followed the ghost through to a small living space and sat down on a seat that almost wasn’t strong enough to carry his weight. He sat and watched in silence as the boy, the ghost, lifted a kettle from the fire and did indeed make a cup of tea. The man took a sip from the cup that was placed before him, first sniffing suspiciously in case it was drugged or a potion or anything that a malevolent spirit might want to force down their victim.   
It was tea. Weak— as you’d expect from a boy who had lived half a life before he’d had to make himself a cup of tea— but it was tea.  
“Well?” the prince demanded, never one to stand silence for too long. “Don’t you want to know what happened? Where I’ve been all this time? Why I’m back to haunt you and make you suffer for all of your many sins?”  
The man practically grimaced. Respect for the dead be damned, if he was facing down the ghost of his former employer the spectre had done a good job of imitating his impudent manner. The boy couldn’t wait to reveal something he knew that you didn’t. The man almost didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to give the ghost the satisfaction of knowing he wanted to know the truth.  
“You jumped.”  
“I did.”  
“We found your crown in the morning. We were—_she_ was distraught.”  
That seemed to shut him up, for a second at least. The man saw a flash of grief in his eyes, but it was hidden again soon enough. It was silent in the lighthouse for as long as the man could bear not to ask the question.  
“Fine. How did you survive?”  
“I had a friend. And a magical necklace.”  
“The… creature.” The man was still too superstitious to say the word, if it could be avoided. The boy nodded in agreement. “He found you in the water?”  
“I followed the music.”  
The man blanched. “You followed a _siren’s call_?”  
The boy rolled his eyes. “He is a boy, like me. Not a siren, or an omen of death and bad luck. Just my friend. He asked me to come with him, and I did.”  
There was a pause then, and the man felt the history they had hanging over the conversation. “I would— if I had known that you— I would not have told them. If I had known.”  
“There was not a different way I would have acted.”  
“I only wanted you safe.“  
“You made a mistake.” The man conceded to that, his head hanging heavy with the shame he had carried for years. The boy let the silence linger for a moment more before he cut through, changing the subject. “You haven’t asked me where I’ve been.”  
The man, gritting his teeth, asked.  
“Many places.” He seemed far away then. “There was always somewhere new to see, some swarm of creatures I had never seen before, or an artefact lost underwater to find. I met other mermaids from all over the world. I lived in a palace made of paper-thin shell and watched thousands of rainbow-coloured creatures fly past my window every morning.” He cut off, giving the man a hard look. “But you don’t believe me.”  
“Of course I don’t believe you.”  
“Of course you don’t,” the boy agreed, earnestly, and carried on with his story. “It was an unbelievable life. I was happier than I ever had been, I saw the most incredible sights every day and had more people around me who cared for my well being than I had dared to think could. But of course it could not last.” He paused then, his face turning a little darker, and the man became more aware of this empty lighthouse, alone on the edge of the sea.   
“Even though I could breathe with the necklace, my body couldn’t cope being underwater for such a long time and I became unwell. We tried many things— we even visited a sea witch, but there was not much that they could do for me. They could have helped me breathe underwater without my necklace, but nothing more.”  
The man held in his horror at learning that the prince would have been willing to make a deal with magic in order to live his life underwater. He waited to hear the rest, invested despite his skepticism.  
“We argued then, for a few days actually. Well,” he corrected himself, moving his hands to reference the strange gestures he would make to the mermaid when they first met. “As best we could.”  
“He insisted that we shouldn’t stay together if I was sick, and I argued that I had chosen this and I was willing to deal with a little sickness to stay. Looking back I realise that it wouldn’t have worked, but I did not want to leave, and I am very stubborn when I want to be.”  
“Just a little,” the man muttered. The prince either didn’t hear or chose not to react.  
“Of course arguing and being sick was perfectly miserable, so eventually we agreed on a middle ground. He took me to the shore and asked me to stay at least until I had recovered. He promised to return, and spend the time searching for another option, but for the time being I agreed to wait on land. Of course I did not wish to return to the castle, nor did I think I would be welcome.” The man opened his mouth to counter this thought, but decided against it. “He had brought me to this beach and the lighthouse looked abandoned. It seemed the most logical choice.”  
“And you’ve stayed here all this ti-?”  
There was a flash of a grin as the prince cut across him. ”I’m not finished— in fact, I’m only about halfway through.  
“I waited out a few weeks here, only leaving a handful of times to travel into town for food. I spent most of the time recovering, but once I was well enough I began to wait out of doors for him to return. I had nothing else to do here, aside from the odd book I brought back, and what repair work I was strong enough to begin.”   
The man eyed the odd, rickety pieces of furniture about the room doubtfully, the windows still rattling in the wind behind him. He decided it would be kinder not to make any critical comment on the work the boy had taken on.  
“Of course I was worried about being spotted, but no one seemed to realise who I was. I think from all the time I was shut away in the castle, no one in the kingdom had ever actually seen me.”  
It was a sad thought, but it did not surprise the man. He kept silent, waiting for the boy to continue his story.   
“I would wait on the beach whenever the sun was out, and only returned indoors at night. I tried to call for him using the shell, but he did not respond at that time. It was probably only a few weeks that I had to spend here waiting, but at that time it felt like months.  
“And then, finally, he did return. But not how I had expected— it was at night, for starters.” The prince paused then, and the man, knowing it was for dramatic effect, refused to ask what happened next. The prince carried on, unaware. “And he had legs.”   
To this, the man did react. “He—”  
“He went to the sea witch, yes. He’d sold a memory for a spell that would change his body. I was angry, of course, when I found out. But at the time I was so glad to see him, and he was cold, so I carried him into the house.”  
“Couldn’t he walk?” the man asked, bluntly.  
The prince shook his head. “He was too weak.”   
“I set him here, where we sit now, for a moment while I went to make some food for both of us. I remember when I came back he had wrapped himself up into the blanket, almost as though he could pretend he still had a tail under it.  
“He told me then that this wouldn’t be forever. He would have to return to the sea in three days, at midnight just like he had come.”  
“Why only three?”  
“I am not sure, I assume that was the price he could pay. You have to be careful with sea magic. If you ask for too much, you can end up giving more than you had expected.” The man nodded at this. There were rumours he had heard from his days on the sea of magic and the price it could cost. “I have asked him many times, but he refuses to tell me what he gave to her.”  
“How did he take to becoming human?” the man asked, imagining that if he awoke to double the amount of appendages than he was used to he would find reason to be upset.   
“He is stronger now, but I do not think he likes to walk. It feels as strange to him as breathing underwater did to me, I think. And he is always cold— I think his blood must work differently underwater than it does when he is human. At the time, I had to help him everywhere, and he spent most of the first night in the bathtub trying to warm up.”  
The image of the creature came forward in the man’s mind, an image of the boy hidden away under the water, in a bathtub that had been pulled into the prince’s room. It was an image that he hadn’t allowed himself to think of for many years.  
“That must have been odd for the both of you.”  
“He asked me if he looked strange and commented that it was funny to find himself in a bathtub again.”  
“What did you say?”  
“…. I told him he was beautiful.”  
“I meant about the bathtub.”  
The prince kept his expression cool, but the rising colour on his cheeks gave his embarrassment away.  
“Anyway, that is how I came to be here. I wait alone by the sea with my books and help the ships, and for three days a month I can see my friend.”   
They sat for a moment in the quiet, listening to the sound of the wind howling and blowing itself out just beyond the windows. The rain seemed to have slowed, and the prince watched it thoughtfully from his seat while the man considered everything he had just been told. It was a ridiculous story, and he did not believe one word of it. However, it was far too long and specific for a ghost, he felt, so he was inclined to think that the boy was simply lying.  
Neither spoke for several minutes, and when the prince broke the silence to ask a question, it was with a far more subdued tone than he had used when explaining his own history.   
“What happened at the castle?”  
“It is still much the same as ever,” the man paused, wondering how to phrase his next line delicately. “Did you see…?”  
“The funeral procession? Yes. I was in the crowd.”  
The man nodded. He thought it better to not ask the boy what attending his father’s funeral— a father he had never been close to— at a distance had been like.  
“Who is ruling now? I don’t suppose even my mother is influential enough to continue to hold onto the kingdom without a familial connection.”  
“The girl. The one you were engaged to.”  
The boy frowned. “Oh. How is she—”   
The man pursed his lips. The matter had caused quite a stir within the castle staff, and had been one of the reasons why he himself had moved on. “Your signature was forged, sir. Your parents put out the news that you had died the night of the wedding, rather than the night before.”  
“Oh,” the boy said softly, more to himself than the man. “I suppose that is a good thing.”  
The man found himself colouring, bristling with sudden fury he hadn’t realised he still harboured. “It was _disrespectful_, sir. Not an hour after the news of your— of your death came out, and they were already—”  
“I would not have been a good king,” the boy interrupted his anger, though he looked touched at its cause. “Nor did I ever wish to be king. I wanted to explore, and live quietly. If they had had the sense to tell me I could have moved away if I married her I would have agreed to it— and I trust she has been a good queen.”  
“They did what they thought was best for you sir,” the man spoke more to comfort the boy than to express his beliefs.  
It was the boy’s turn to pause now. “And… how is my mother?”  
The man found himself shaking his head. “She is… lost I might say. Like she has lost her purpose.”  
The boy nodded, but did not speak.  
“You could try to see her, if you—?” The boy had shaken his head before all of the words were out.  
It hung over them again— their history. Everything the man had done.  
“I don’t suppose there is any use in asking a ghost for forgiveness,” the man spoke softly.  
“No, I don’t suppose there is.” The man nodded, dropping his head again. “So it is fortunate that you have been calling me sir for the past conversation, meaning you believe me, and I cannot possibly be a ghost.”  
The man pursed his lips. “It must be your obnoxious attitude. It brings me right back to the castle, sir.” The boy grinned at that.  
“Well. I think you will have to believe me, as I am expecting a guest, and you will have to be leaving soon. You may visit me again, the next time you are in this kingdom, providing you don’t find an abandoned lighthouse when you return.”  
The man shook his head in disbelief— at the prince, at the story he had told, at the evening in general— but stood to make his way towards the door. A thought occurred to him as he took a final look around the cluttered room, and he reached into his pack to pull out an item he had been carrying with him for years now. It was worn, despite the fact that he hardly ever looked at it, but he had kept it safe as best he could.  
He held it out to the prince, gently as he could. “I have this, still.”  
The prince looked at the book like it was a relic of ancient history and the man supposed that, in a way, it was. He reached for it slowly and pulled his old journal— his first— from the man’s hands and began to flick delicately through the pages.   
“I don’t—” The words slipped out in a hush, the boy’s eyes shining as they greedily took in the pages. He squeezed them shut and closed the pages once more, composed again a second later. “Well. I’d forgotten how bad I used to be at drawing people for one thing.” He spoke crassly as was his nature, but the man watched him carefully place the book high up on a shelf, somewhere it would be safe.   
“One more thing,” he said, and the man waited expectantly. “Before you go, help me push my boat into the water.”  
The man rolled his eyes at this. “However do you manage while I am not around?”  
“Slowly. I was going out to begin pushing when you decided to trespass into my living room.”  
The rain had slowed to a light drizzle while they had spoken, and the man could see the moon now that the clouds had begun to clear, full and hanging halfway across the sky.   
They did not speak as the boat was pushed out. It was not hard work, the boat was light and the sand was slick from the rain, but the dark sky and calming ocean left the man not wanting to make any noise that would raise above the ocean’s swell. When they had finished the prince stood, looking out to the sea and contemplating the moon. He too was quiet when he spoke, as though he didn’t want to interrupt the rushing of the waves.  
“I do have one more question.”  
The man resisted asking when the boy ever didn’t.  
“Why did you help me that day? You must have known it would end like this.”  
The man had often wondered it over the years, not least the days when the creature had been inside the castle. Why he had helped, and then turned against them, and then helped again. He struggled to put the thoughts into words.  
“He just seemed so helpless. Despite all my years, and all I’d seen, I just couldn’t believe that that—boy, could do harm. Helpless, he seemed,” the man trailed off. “And lonely.”  
The prince had no words for that—at least none he would say out loud. _And so did you_, the man wanted to add. _You had more than any other boy could ever want, but you were always so alone_. It wasn’t right. That day on the beach, and again on the night of the wedding, the man had helped him because he knew the boy needed a friend.  
And then it was time to leave. The boy began to push the boat out into the water, and the man turned away without a goodbye.  
The man didn’t look back—at least not at first. He waited until he was on higher ground, and then looked down upon the lighthouse again. Its lights were still on and even from a distance it looked warm and inviting. Squinting out to sea, he searched until he spotted the boy, sat in his little boat and waiting patiently in the light of the moon. He seemed to have a book with him that the man hadn’t even noticed him carry out from the lighthouse. The man waited with the boy in the gloom, curious about what would happen next. He expected some sign of magic, a gathering of storm clouds or a crack of strangely coloured thunder, or at least a whirlpool. Instead, the night stayed quiet. The only sign that someone had arrived was a ripple in the moon’s reflection that the man wouldn’t have noticed if the boy hadn’t moved towards it.   
He helped the stranger up onto his boat and offered a blanket or towel for him to wrap into. The stranger from the water seemed to shiver in the blanket, and leaned towards the boy. They held each other gently, and the moment felt so personal and caring that the man looked away, despite being far away enough that the pair could not know they were being watched.  
Despite the distance the man had noticed two things about the boy from the water— he had legs, like any other human, and he had a startlingly bright crop of unusually coloured hair. His curls were a familiar shade of mint teal.  
The man left. Dawn was approaching and he was still without a place to sleep. Perhaps he would walk to the houses of the kingdom, or maybe the next kingdom along. Perhaps he would find a comfortable inn that would let him stay for work rather than money. Perhaps there would be an innkeeper’s daughter or a sweet-looking delivery girl and perhaps she would take to him and they would fall in love. Perhaps they would live in a small cottage by the sea and the man would finally have his own son and perhaps a daughter, and he would take them to explore the beach and teach them all he knew about the sea and on stormy nights they’d all sit by the fire and he’d tell them stories of the prince and the mermaid who lived in the lighthouse on the edge of the bay, and a past life when he had worked in a castle and known them.  
The man shook his head from the rosy vision. The events of the evening had left him feeling raw and emotional, but for the time being the wind was still chilly and he was still a little damp from the earlier rain. He’d start by finding a bed and somewhere he might get a drink. And then after that, perhaps he’d start on his next life.


End file.
